Your Business Tip to
Work Smarter not Harder

Think Like An Entrepreneur

Let's start by digging into some of the frameworks that ActionCOACH has to help entrepreneurs understand their real role in business and how to run an automatic business that runs without them.

You see, as a small and medium-sized enterprise, what is your product? Is it the food that you serve? Or the service that you sell?

We say that your product is actually your business, and the only reason that you would want to build a business is to eventually sell it.

Now some of you I think might disagree but some of you might decide to franchise it. Well, that's selling.

Some of you might decide to bring in new shareholders and that's selling it, partially.

Some of you might want to sell it all together and then again, some of you might want to go IPO with this business.

The essence is that the name of the game in owning a business is “How can I further expand my wealth by using other people's money?” Whether it's expanding my business or selling it or building other businesses. But either way, I have built something that is a value and that other people want to buy at a high price. After that, I just need to move on. And after that, just create more of my wealth portfolio. It's as simple as that.

But many of the entrepreneurs that begin the coaching process actually have the mindset of “I am the worker in the business.” and “I'm the manager in the business.”

Let's take a look at the six different types of mindsets that entrepreneurs actually have in building their own businesses.

In the diagram, you will see different types of entrepreneurs with different ways of thinking.

Conceptionally, you are an entrepreneur. But I want to take some time and to really show you how you actually think.

Some entrepreneurs think like an employee. Maybe they are the creator of a good product or they're a good chef or a good electrician because they like cooking or they like solving electrical problems. All they do is stick their head in the kitchen or they're out in their truck fixing electrical problems.

Maybe you are a great software developer and you own a creative business and all you do all day is design and develop software.

But maybe you're a great salesman. You started your business because you were such a great salesman. But all you do is sell, sell, sell. You forget about other areas of business - Finance, Operations, or HR
because why? You're so busy selling. This is the mindset of an employee-entrepreneur.

And then when you're sticking your head in only one department, some of us graduate to the self-employed mindset. They are entrepreneurs that want to go across all departments. They want to know how to do everything but sometimes they do way too much. They need to hire people, but they don't. They might have hired people, but they don't trust them and they're still doing everything so they're getting minimal results because they're doing everything and they end up just being burnt out.

Some of us, get to that next level of becoming a manager in our own business. This is where we start. Some of us at this level say, “Hey, we've arrived! We finally got to where we want to be.” Why? Because if you were an employee before, you know that CEOs, like the hottest title in the company at this level of an entrepreneurial mindset, we say to ourselves, “I want to be the CEO.”

Well, in ActionCoach, CEO actually means the center of everything or you're the chief everything officer. CEO is not the end. It's just a glorified employee in your organization. This is the managerial stage where we get our clients up. We've had an established business. We're running it. However, you're still running the business. You're just a hotshot employee for your own business.

At the bottom three levels, you're working in the business and you're trading time for money. This is what we call Active Income. When you get up from these levels, you start to think like a business owner.

A business owner can build a system in a business so the management can run it through their employees. This is where you start working on the business. And after you accomplish this, you can now invest and do bigger things and do bigger investments to increase your wealth portfolio. And now, you're making money with your own money.

But when you get to the entrepreneurial level of thinking, you start making more money by using other people's money. Selling a great idea so other people want to buy it. This is called working on the business.

Now my question is, “Where are you at?” You know, legally?
Yes, you might own a business. But, where's your mindset? Where's your head at? Are you thinking like an employee or are you thinking like a manager or a business owner-investor or an entrepreneur?