There is a considerable amount of difference in perspective regarding being an employee and being an entrepreneur or an employer.
There is a lot one needs to change when one wants to move from being an employee to an entrepreneur.
I have done a job for 4 years and then worked as a freelancer for more than a decade. Moreover, I tried some partnerships, and now I am building a team for my TastedRecipes.
So there is a lot of mindset change from being an employee to an employer and building the team.
Entrepreneurs have a different perspective. I have seen a considerable amount of difference in perspective when it comes to being an employee and an entrepreneur.
As an example office on holidays means an upset in moods for employees. When I was an employee, I also became upset because I always had plans to do something for my own sites on weekends.
As of today if I prefer writing for my blog on weekends because those are the days when I don’t respond to clients unless anything critical.
So if you want to be moving from being an employee to becoming a freelancer, blogger, or even an entrepreneur, the viewpoint change is a must. If you cannot change the viewpoint, it will be impossible to move from being an employee to an entrepreneur.
So let me share what perspectives I think an individual has to change from an employee to an entrepreneur.
Perspective #1. Accountability
As an employee, you may not be accountable for everything. One can always redirect the accountability to others including your team leader or project manager.
However, as an entrepreneur, you are accountable for what you do but you are even accountable for what your employee does irrespective of what you asked them to do.
Perspective #2. Love What You Do
As an employee, you may not love what you have been told to do. Still, you may do it because you want to be paid the salary.
However, as an entrepreneur, you should love what you are doing.
Starting a business requires long hours of work and dedication. It may not be easy for you to get long hours unless you love what you are doing.
As an employee, I worked for almost 100 hours per week when I was building my forums side by side.
When as I got back from my job, I used to work on my websites, write content, develop things I needed for my websites, read a lot of other blogs and books, and so on and so forth.
I never felt like I was working because I loved doing that. Still, I work for more than 80 hours a week. The best part is it doesn’t feel like I am working because I love what I do.
Perspective #3. Multiple Focus
Being an employee all you care about is – having a job the next day, the next week, the next month …
One can achieve it if he is assigned to a project, which is long-lasting and is profitable.
As an entrepreneur, you need to focus on a lot of metrics.
How is the top line performing? What’s your bottom line? How to improve the top line and bottom line? Where can you get more clients to grow? What government policies can help or harm you?
And this list can be never-ending.
Perspective #4. Visionary and Active (Not Reactive)
As an employee, if something you see that may not work, the max you do is gossip over a cup of coffee in the cafeteria or over lunch with a colleague.
As an entrepreneur, you take needed action to make sure you correct it as soon as possible. Otherwise, it may just cost you the complete business.
One of my employers assigned me to a new project. It was a huge investment the company was doing, and everyone was so excited about it. It was the development of some super cool framework so we can easily add a lot more functionality to the addon product by dragging and dropping.
When I was assigned to the project, I was also very excited about it but always had one question in my mind. People don’t buy our product because of the functionality in the addon product but because of the robustness of the original product. Why are we investing so much in the functionality of it?
A few years after I left the company, I found that the super cool framework is shelved.
Perspective #5. Learning Curve
As an employee, you may focus on learning the technology you are working on to keep you updated for the task.
As an entrepreneur; you may need to be focusing on learning everything that comes your way. Working with Excel to marketing your products to moving onto some unfamiliar technology and the list goes on.
There is a lot to learn, but you tend to be doing things within your comfort zone as an employee. However, as an entrepreneur, you will have to go way above and beyond your comfort zone.
Final Thoughts
Do you have a mindset of an entrepreneur?
If your answer is yes and if you are thinking about moving from being an employee to an entrepreneur, and the only thing that is stopping you from being an entrepreneur is finance, think once again.
As you grow old, your financial requirements will always increase and not decrease. You may not be able to save more than today. So this is the moment when you should be taking the needed action. This is the moment to test things out and don’t let it linger for too long.
If you don’t have an entrepreneur’s mindset, there is nothing much that you can do.
So I will ask once again, do you have a mindset of an entrepreneur?
