What is an entrepreneurial mindset, and how can a person acquire it. First things first, but if you are an entrepreneur or are planning on becoming one, you need to start thinking differently to most other people out there.
What Is An Entrepreneur?
“An entrepreneur is a starter. An entrepreneur is an initiator, a challenger and a driver. Someone that creates something new, either an initiative, a business or a company. He or she is the beginning (and sometimes the end) of a venture, project or activity.”
What Does It Mean To Be A Good Entrepreneur?
“Emotional stability, tactfulness and warm human relations are some important qualities which bring success to an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur who maintains good human relations is much more likely to succeed in his business than the individual who does not practice such relations.”
Unfortunate Facts:
Too many self-proclaimed “entrepreneurs” sell hype, not facts, to the masses.
Others profess to have the secrets to earning extraordinary wealth and they sell their get-rich-quick books and programs aggressively and unscrupulously.
A true entrepreneur knows how to maximize every business opportunity by approaching each one well-prepared, focused and motivated. Only then is success defined as being on his or her terms and momentum determined by his level of commitment, not by an arbitrary goal promised by someone hoping to sell you on vague proclamations.
It is up to the entrepreneur in training to learn the principles of entrepreneurship, how to adopt the necessary mindset and retain a proper understanding of the process.
What Is An Entrepreneurial Mindset And How Can I Learn?
You need to have a different mindset totally from somebody who is working in a day job, someone who is a student or even from someone who has retired.
Also, you will notice that most successful entrepreneurs don’t believe in luck either.
Believe it or not success doesn’t just happen overnight. Being an entrepreneur means you have to work very hard at it, or you just don’t make it. So if you are still wondering what is an entrepreneurial mindset, it is not a mindset that doesn’t involve work and commitment.
You need to eliminate the word luck from you vocab, as it is not about luck at all, it takes planning, and even working when others aren’t.
The word freedom also comes to mind when you think of an entrepreneur, but what does this actually mean?
To me it means that nobody needs to tell me what to do and when to do it and I can spend my time doing what I want to do. But remember freedom doesn’t mean not having to work, but rather the choice to choose the work you have to do rather than do it because you have too.
Being an entrepreneur is about rethinking the way that you balance you work and you life. For instance when people are normally knocking off of work, you could be hard at work. Being an entrepreneur is not about having a hobby, but rather a passion that you can’t stop thinking about. I sometimes wake up a 3am and do some work, not because I have to, but because I am wired that way.
Being an entrepreneur you have to remember that the more time that you carve out in a day to work, the more successful you will be. This is the opposite to normal employees who are given set hours to work.
You as an entrepreneur have to be responsible to put in the time and effort if you want to be successful. It is impossible to fail, unless you give up, and this is where you need to retrain you brain. You can’t give up. You are you business and you business is you. It is up to you to learn from you mistakes. If you can’t do something, you learn. If you get stuck you alone are responsible for fixing it.
Being an entrepreneur, you don’t get paid hourly like normal employers. Often you invest hours but don’t get paid until a lot later. If you spend time on you business, think of it as investing in you business. So in the beginning you feel like you are hardly making anything, but actually it is not about the dollars and cents, it is about the goal setting, sense of accomplishment each day and knowing that you are working towards the future of you business. That is a huge mindset change for most people, as they won’t ever see monetary rewards straight away.
In fact in the beginning you often lose more money that you make, but you need to rethink and train you brain to see money as a by product and not as the be all and end all of you business.
So focus each day on completing you goals and you training, and the rest will come in time.
As an entrepreneur you need to gain knowledge as you grow you business. Learn from others, learn and apply what you learn and leverage the success of others who have been there before you.
Remember, often you have to try and try again before you get results, but you need to think like an entrepreneur if you want this all to take place.
How To Uncover The Entrepreneur In you
There are some personality components that are critical to entrepreneurial thinking.
They are among st others:
- Your unique personality
- Knowledge
- Motivation
- Confidence
- Strategies
- Resourcefulness
- Dedication
- Perseverance
If you are lucky enough to possess some of these qualities, you are halfway to understanding what is an entrepreneurial mindset.
Find Your Passion
Nothing inspires action more than pure passion. Without the passion, you won’t be inspired to take action in the first place, and then keep consistent for the long haul.
Find New Ideas
Being an entrepreneur means that you brain is always in overdrive trying to think of new ideas or ways to make money. It’s all about creating something new every day. It’s about being creative and today there are more ideas than ever right in front of us on the internet. You just need to tap into them. Something as simple as selling candy bars could end up becoming a successful business.
Sometimes you need to have confidence in you abilities and go for it. Many people get great money making ideas, but never take action on those ideas. As an entrepreneur you need to be different, unique, take action and persevere.
Never Stop Learning
This is a big one. You should be learning something new every day, and in this way you will grow as a person and an entrepreneur. Make it you motto to never stop learning, and always remember that you are never too old to learn.
Don’t Let Fear Stand In Your Way
Sometimes this means taking a step in the direction less traveled. You can’t let fear hold you back and stop you from trying new things. Trust you instincts. Many successful people have failed many times before they have succeeded, and this is how you grow and learn.
Remember, the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person is how they each react during difficult times.
Start Small, But Think Big
Mold you business over time. Then as you add to it you will add momentum to you business.
When you start small you will be super focused on you business and growing it. Set goals and make them bigger as you go along. Always strive to grow to somewhere better than where you are at now, but don’t focus so far ahead that it makes the little things just ahead of you impossible to achieve.
Don’t Become Complacent
This is the mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make. Once they are successful, they start to get lazy and slack off, instead of keeping the flame alive and looking for new ways to expand their business, even if it is in other directions.
You never know what can happen tomorrow, so never think you can put all you eggs in one basket and stay the same forever. Learn to diversify. Try different things and at least if one stream of income is cut off, you always have others to fall back on.
You don’t need a degree to make money online, and there are many financial opportunities if you’re aggressive enough to find them, but you must continually push forward, work hard and live with an eye toward financial security.
So now you know what is an entrepreneurial mindset and I am sure you know that you have some of these traits listed here. If you want to become an entrepreneur, there is nothing more rewarding than being able to generate you own income on you terms.
If you want to start you own online business and become an entrepreneur, then I highly recommend you start off with this training.
I love what you have written here! To achieve independence and freedom, one must not sit around whining about how hard one works but never gets ahead. As you say, it’s about putting in the time that most people won’t and sticking with it. It’s funny you should mention getting up at 3 AM to get some work done because I do the same thing. Can’t sleep? Might as well accomplish something! Thank you for posting!
“To be successful, you must be willing to do the things today others won’t do in order to have the things tomorrow others won’t have.” -Les Brown
So glad I am not the only one who works at 3 am Cynthia. Thank you for your comment and that phrase is so true. You actually need to do things others wouldn’t in order to be successful.
Hi Michel,
Thank you, this was a good article for entrepreneurs – On top of that, I think an entrepreneur must also be someone who has a goal set up for himself. That’s an important element as well. Not only a goal, but he needs to know how to reach his goal. He needs to define objectives on how to achieve his goal.
You are right Aubin. One has to set up specific targets and have a plan set out on how to achieve them. You have to be strict with yourself on this especially if you are working on your own.
Your write up is a masterpiece, very elaborate and straight to the point.
Entrepreneurship is not a hobby but a passion that must be harnessed through creative thinking that will initiate it into a productive venture. An entrepreneur is an initiator who drive ideas from their places of hatching them through careful and proper planning with strong motivation that knows nothing like quitting, to where they materialize as either services or products.
You said it all entrepreneurial mindset involves hard work and commitment not based on luck. What some people may be calling luck is when preparedness meets with opportunity some people call it luck.
An entrepreneur is always prepared to work not depending on luck. Freedom is not a license to laziness but judicious use of your time, working when you need to work and not as one being commanded to work. It is about doing the right thing at the right time.
As an entrepreneur you need knowledge and plenty of it and luckly the heart of a man is elastic and can stretched to any extent is exposed to but like a parachute it does not open untill it is put into use.
Thanks for your thoughts Ephraim. I agree and there is a lot more to being an entrepreneur than meets the eye.
Selling hype never works in the long run. People finally figure out that they are being sold a lot of stuff that has no real substance. A real entrepreneur has their clients in mind as to providing the best products and services. This what results in a long-term business because of the positive relationships established over time. Good customer support is part of this scenario as well.
This type of make money now mindset is never satisfied and continually learning and is innovative in providing better service and products. I appreciate your insights on this.
Having the right mindset is so important for long term success, but patience is a big part of it, as it is impossible to think that you can be successful overnight without putting in the groundwork.
I think you have chosen a topic that the whole world loves. At one place you mention who is an entrepreneur. Yes, he is a starter and inhibitor. I also agree with this. The man who maintains wonderful emotional intelligence is going to succeed in all of the things that finally make him wealthier.
Thanks for sharing this article
Thanks for your comment Chinthaka. I think in the future we are going to see more and more entrepreneurs emerging.