Are you or would you like to be a self employed entrepreneur? Is a self employed person always an entrepreneur, or is it possible to be either?
Self Employed Entrepreneur – Self Employment
Many people are self employed simply by virtue of their employment status. A self employed person might very well have a ‘job’ of sorts but they pay their own taxes and are freelancers. However, their job role is still the same as it would be in a regular job, in many cases. A self employed person simply ‘owns’ their job. They don’t have a boss as such, but can work for many different people.
Self Employed Entrepreneur – An Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is also self employed, however entrepreneurial life can be very different. Entrepreneurs organize and operate businesses or a business. They often take more financial risks than a self employed person might who simply ‘owns’ their job. Entrepreneurs are concerned with the building of a business. They are less tied up within the business themselves and more focused on the big picture. Although they can also be running the business too.
Both the entrepreneur and self employed overlap, and depending on your particular circumstances you can one or the other or both. If you have worked for someone else for many years and set up a business by yourself, you will find your skill set is that of an employee. You will need to learn how to promote and sell your business as well as work in it.
As time goes on you may start to focus on the promotion of your business instead of ‘acting’ as an employee for yourself.
The Employee Mindset Vs. Entrepreneur
Are you stuck with an employee mindset? If you are familiar with being an employee and have moved into owning your own small business, you may have some problems. This can be due to your ’employee mindset’.
An employee is focused on doing the job well and answering to the boss. You might be very good in this role and have done it for a long time. When shifting to owning a business which you also run, it can be easy to get ‘stuck’ running the same old programs. But you now answer to customers (and profits/losses) rather than your boss. Doing the same things which used to bring success in the employed role, will no longer work in this new scenario. Although it will mean you can run the day to day mechanics of things, you also need to drive the business forward. This takes a new skill set.
Shifting To Entrepreneur Mindset
The entrepreneur sees what is possible, rather than what is in front of them. Skills which an entrepreneur can bring to a small business can change it in terms of customers and profit. Entrepreneurs are not concerned with the ‘ground floor’ running of things. That’s the job of an employee or manager.
As an entrepreneur your job is make a business successful. Shifting from a self employed small business owner ‘mindset’ to that of an entrepreneur can take time. If you’re stuck with an employee mindset you are only looking at the daily tasks and not at the bigger picture. You need to focus on growing your business and taking yourself out of the ‘loop’. Otherwise you have simply moved from being an employee with a boss, to owning a job, of which you become a slave to!
Self Employed Entrepreneur
So entrepreneurship is about becoming free from the burdens of the employee role and even the role of ‘owning’ your own business. What you really own is a job – just like the one you wanted out of when working for a boss! A self employed entrepreneur then, has learned the skills of the self employed person and those of the entrepreneur. They can run the ‘floor’ of their business and drive it forward with the skills of the entrepreneur as well; marketing and selling their business and making it grow. Learn how to market your business online. Follow this link for access to a video series.Â