The most important difference between an “Entrepreneur vs Employee Mindset” is that an employee is paid by the amount of time they invest whereas an entrepreneur is paid by the results they produce.
We have limited time, But our results can be limitless.
The employer or the people, in general, will only pay you if you can provide value and at optimal efficiency to them.
The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as “a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit”.
But, I believe An Entrepreneur is a Goal oriented mindset that works on solving real-life problems to make the world a better place.
They take full responsibility for their actions and are flexible in listening to the opinions of others.
Freedom and Authority over ideas and opinions are the key difference between an Entrepreneur and an Employee and the greatest rewards of being an Entrepreneur.
What Are The Traits of an Entrepreneur?
Four(04) basic ingredients that make an Entrepreneur are creative, innovative, optimistic, and opportunistic.
These are the qualities that anyone can learn and thus everyone has the potential to become an Entrepreneur. To completely understand the following questions keep reading the post.
What Employee mindset is holding you back?
The employee Mindset wants security in life whereas the Entrepreneur Mindset wants growth in life and for that, they can take any calculated risk.
Employee Mindset works under the pressure of the boss. But an Entrepreneur Mindset is free to do anything. Freedom is the Entrepreneurs’ greatest advantage.
Employee Mindset is paid by the amount of time they invest whereas an Entrepreneur Mindset is paid by results they produce.
Employee Mindset needs external motivation like monetary benefits whereas an Entrepreneur Mindset is self-motivated towards building a brand for themselves by establishing a healthy relationship with the customers.
Employee Mindset does not take responsibility for their actions. They look for someone else to blame for their mistakes. But an Entrepreneur Mindset takes full responsibility for the actions and has the discipline to work on them.
What does it mean to be an Entrepreneur?
I feel that the journey of developments from sloppy habits to a laser-focused mindset is what develops an entrepreneur.
An Entrepreneur is fully aware of the results they want. They have clear goals and a roadmap to reach their result. The high-efficiency results of an entrepreneur are because they repeatedly ask themselves 2 important questions during work.
- What should I DO NOW to get my desired result?
- What techniques/tools I should use to maximize the output result for a unit of time i.e. to “improve and optimize Output/Time efficiency”?
Develop the Entrepreneurial spirit inside you and start taking calculated risks innovating success.
All it takes to change from an obedient employee to an innovative entrepreneur/business owner is your mindset. Have faith in your ability and hard work to turn stones into gold.
What Are The Types of Entrepreneurs?
I believe there are two categories of entrepreneurs; one who is a born entrepreneur while the other makes themselves an entrepreneur.
For the first category, it’s a way of life. They can maximize the resources and get the most out of a situation.
They know when to do, how to do, and what to do at a specific time. They are free-minded people and are thus hard to be employed.
They prefer independence to anything else.
And the second category, they develop these qualities by studying successful people. For them, the greatest motivation is to get out of their present lifestyle and create wealth, to get recognition and freedom for themselves.
They are mostly employed people who are not satisfied with their current self and thus want to break free and fly high.
The self-made entrepreneur comes from being an employee and thus they carry certain inefficient habits/cultures like procrastination with them.
Sometimes they are not even aware of it. The ones who can set themselves free from these ill habits become successful, while the majority of the rest just wonders why luck was not on their side.
Top 7 Misconceptions Regarding Entrepreneur
1. Entrepreneurs Are Born Not Made
I beg to differ from the idea that “Everyone cannot become an Entrepreneur”.
Yes, an entrepreneur indeed has a different mindset but those are a collection of skill sets that can be learned with proper guidance.
“If our cells replace themselves every 7 years, that means that you’re not the same person that you were seven years ago.”
There is so less successful Entrepreneur because of one core reason: Normal people lack self believe whereas an entrepreneur has faith in themselves even when the entire world and circumstances are against them.
2. Entrepreneurs Don’t Have a Personal Life
Just because they are passionate about their work and think about work 24hr doesn’t mean they don’t have a personal life.
Since they focus on a growth mindset, they learn the skills of prioritizing their work. Thus, they achieve more in less time.
They have a laser-focused routine and follow it meticulously.
They are their boss and thus have a better chance of spending quality time with family when the family needs them. But it all depends on individual will and urge and has less to do with being an entrepreneur.
3. Only Young People Become Successful Entrepreneurs
Just 2 examples:
Stan Lee created the first The Fantastic Four comic at around the age of 40 which later led to him co-creating X-men, Spider-Man, and many more famous comics.
Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, franchised the company at the age of 62.
Passion and dedication mixed with complete faith in one’s idea and the urge of learning from bad experiences are what makes an Entrepreneur.
Age is just another random number; it’s not a limitation.
4. Only College Dropouts Become Entrepreneurs
Most of the successful entrepreneurs are either college dropouts or does not have proper MBA type degree.
But that doesn’t mean you have to leave your formal education to become an entrepreneur. The reason why those people left college is that they understood that “Multitasking reduces productivity”.
They wanted to give their entire time and effort to their idea and thus left college. But they never stopped learning. Because when learning stops, growth stops.
5. Entrepreneurs are Only Motivated by Money
Money is one of the key motivators for both employee and an entrepreneur but entrepreneurs are more inclined to learn from their experience and building relationship.
It’s a fact that an entrepreneur wants to grow big. Thus, they know it well that relationship with their customers is more important than money.
Everyone wants to earn profit for their services and efforts but an entrepreneur mindset wants to earn the customer’s trust and loyalty also.
Because of more customers, they earn more profit. I believe the biggest motivation for an Entrepreneur is their freedom of being a boss of their ideas and efforts.
“My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had — every day I’m learning something new.” by Richard Branson (Virgin Group)
6. Entrepreneurs Have the Best Complex Ideas
An Entrepreneur has ideas but what makes it the best is their persistent efforts to realize that idea.
They don’t wait for circumstances to become favorable to work. They work and their hard smart work brings luck and makes things favorable.
Business Plan Ideas of Entrepreneur Mindset.
Entrepreneurs are a problem solver.
They try to find the faults in the present system and provide their assistance to make it easy. Their services are what they charge for and which makes them wealthy.
7. Entrepreneurs Take Risks Without Thinking
To be honest, to get a high return in life, we do have to invest in high-risk segments because its less crowded and an entrepreneur is no different.
An entrepreneur indeed takes a lot of risks but all their decisions are backed by well-researched risk assessments. An Entrepreneur doesn’t take a random decision, they take calculated risks.
One of the best qualities of an entrepreneur is that even if their decision doesn’t give them the desired result, they learn from the experience and that’s priceless.
Key Difference Between Entrepreneur vs Employee Mindset
1. Employee Mindset is Afraid to Take Risks.
We as human beings have Risk Aversion Psychology.
We prefer to have a low return in value for a known risk/chance rather than get a high return for unknown risk.
And this is what keeps us underachieved and in fair term poor, both economically and emotionally. And this is what the employee mindset follows.
But an entrepreneur has developed the willpower to swim in the ocean of uncertainty and that’s what gives them unprecedented success. They can risk their 99% for 1% of achievements.
But is it wise to do so?
Let’s understand this.
- How does an Entrepreneur take risks?
You must understand that they do it after a thorough SWOT Analysis.
SWOT Analysis is a study done to identify all the internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats.
They don’t just randomly decide out of the blue. All their decisions are backed by thorough research and faith in their ability to transform setbacks into success.
- Why an employee doesn’t take risks?
The employer mindset stops the person from taking the risks fearing criticism and job loss.
They are only focused on salary, holidays, health insurance, and cashback. This fear and materialistic desires ultimately do not let them enjoy the sweet fruit of bonus-success.
- What is the reward earned by an Entrepreneur by taking the risk?
The entrepreneur mindset gives their best; risking their everything. They suffer both emotional and financial insecurities yet fearing nothing and thus earning the most.
Their focus is not simply on monetary rewards but to gather experience, build relationships, experience the thrill of new opportunities, and exposure to new skill sets. Constant Growth is the reward earned by an Entrepreneur.
- How to change an Employee Mindset?
There are no magical spells or wands to disappear our fear of rejection and self-doubt. I believe the only effective way an employee mindset can be changed to an entrepreneur mindset is by doing the taking the following 2 simple actionable steps like:
Saying No to useless requests
Stop gossiping and utilizing those times in high priority tasks and learning.
This simple self-decision will help us in building up self-confidence.
2. An Employee Mindset wants Quick Rewards
An employee mindset wants instant rewards for their works whereas an Entrepreneur mindset can delay gratification.
As per the marshmallow experiment, it has been proved that the “will power” of delayed gratification helped people achieve success in life. And that’s one of the core secrets of a successful Entrepreneur.
An Entrepreneur is fully aware of the importance of patience and timing which an employee mindset feels fruitless and ridiculous.
3. An Employee Mindset is sloppy
Why does an Employee Mindset make simple things complicated?
Employee mindset has the habit of procrastination and thus tend to make simple things clumsy, even when it’s not necessary.
An Employee mindset generally works out of fear of their superior. They feel making things complicated makes the work look overachieved.
It’s their way of hiding their inefficiency.
- Why Employee Mindset is not efficient?
They have no desire to add value to their works because their sole focus is monthly salary and perks.
This habit has been developed because the majority of the time they get a salary without their work being verified for its productivity and efficiency.
Even if it’s verified, they may only lose the promotion or small pay hike.
They still get their ongoing salary. This work culture and their attitude make them feel bored at work and thus they are not efficient.
Employee mindset is fixed on promotions and wants to impress their boss by any means possible.
Thus, they indulge in wrong practices rather than focusing more on their performances. This hampers their peer relationship also.
- What makes an Entrepreneur Efficient?
The livelihood of an entrepreneur depends on their work result, and so they are innovative in their work approach.
They find ways of achieving more in less time following various techniques like Pomodoro and Deep Work. They keep things minimal and focus only on one thing at a time.
Employees are paid by time and entrepreneurs are paid by their results.
One great advantage of an entrepreneur is that though they have complete authority over the decisions, yet they listen to everyone to understand their vision and steps to achieve a task.
They are open to suggestions and flexible in their approach. They don’t boss their opinion on others rather grow the opinion based on other input.
Thus, they take more diversified decisions.
But an employee is generally dependent on the boss’ decision. There is little scope of flexibility and that’s why they don’t find it worthy to give their efforts.
Steve Jobs said it well
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people, so they can tell us what to do”.
Steve Jobs
Only when we can come out of our comfort zone, we can true success and freedom.
What Are The Disadvantage of Being an Entrepreneur?
The key disadvantages of being an entrepreneur are stress and financial insecurity.
In the initial days they don’t have a monthly income guarantee to pay their bills, do not have anyone to guide them; hardly any support from others including often family members and the responsibility of the family.
All this adds to their stress. They work so hard on improving themselves that they ignore their health.
These long hours of extremely focused work negatively impact their health, social life, and family life.
Top 11 Quotes on Entrepreneur Mindset
“All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.” — Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn)
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” — Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.)
“Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and want to create.” — David Karp (Tumblr)
“An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.” — Roy Ash (Litton Industries)
“If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6 pm — last thing at night you’ll send emails, first thing in the morning you’ll read emails, and you’’ wake up in the middle of the night. But it’s hugely rewarding as you’re fulfilling something for yourself.” — Niklas Zennstrom (Skype and Kazaa)
“Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading: buying and selling” — Anita Roddick (The Body Shop)
“But as an entrepreneur, you have to feel like you can jump out of an airplane because you’re confident that you’ll catch a bird flying by. It’s an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go play because the bird doesn’t come by, but a few times it does.” — Reed Hastings (Netflix)
“Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give — with a few exceptions — generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.” — Ben Silbermann (Pinterest)
“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars — I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” — Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)
“Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” — Howard Schultz (Starbucks)
“You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.” — Steve Case (AOL)
References
- What makes a die-hard entrepreneur? Beyond the ‘employee or entrepreneur’ dichotomy: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-007-9086-6
- Entrepreneurs or employees: a cross-cultural cognitive analysis: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11365-012-0235-2
- Personality Types of Entrepreneurs: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.96.3.737-746
- Entrepreneurs as authentic leaders: impact on employees’ attitudes: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437730610709273/full/html
- The higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs versus employees: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-012-9443-y
- The entrepreneur: A capable executive and more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0883902685900126
Final Thoughts
Entrepreneurs are the creators of their luck. They work upon their strength and weakness equally to make themselves evolve.
They always deliver quality work rather than quantity of works as they have learned the art of saying NO to useless things.
They seek new opportunities and if they don’t find them; they make them. They have learned to say no to useless things and laser-focused attention to their work.
Entrepreneurs are so focused on their work that they delegate all the non-essential stuff to others;
Thus releasing time and mental resources for their most important work; “To Achieve their Goals”. They have understood that multitasking is detrimental to efficient work.
Entrepreneurs take calculated risks to climb high on the success ladder. They know that competition is always less at the top.
They formulate the plan for the business success based on their own experience, the experience of others(especially competitors) and is flexible in their opinions
The Entrepreneurial Journey consists of having long term vision, divided into short term goals accomplished through daily To-do and Not-To-Do Lists.
They take full responsibility for all the situations. They understand that mistakes are part of life. Not repeating the same mistake is what they focus on.
But, the Employee mindset wants to look good and indulge in blame games for their mistakes. They don’t want to take accountability for anything.
They are motivated by external resources like salary. They don’t have the freedom to apply their ideas without approval. So, they feel it’s worthless to the extra efforts.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset does not happen in one day. It takes time and practice. They do not give up during hard times and thus luck favors them.
What Entrepreneurial Mindset tips you have for the world. Write in the comment below.
Remember: Entrepreneurial thinking is not without its challenges but Entrepreneurs have the ability and vision along with leadership skills to transform any simple business idea into a solid business model that not only makes money but also solves problems for their customers.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, dare to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.)
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