You are not an entrepreneur
Navigating Critical Change
Ah, the “entrepreneurial mindset“, do you have it, do you wish you had it, do you know what it is, do you even care, and what does it mean for how you find and maintain success in your emerging startup?
Firstly, to unpack the ‘mindset’, we need to align on what defines an entrepreneur.
The term was likely coined way back in the 1700s by Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon, who was referencing small business owners that he believed to be essentially risk-takers, stirring up the economic pot to create change and progress.
First and foremost, what counts as being an entrepreneur and what doesn’t is all a bit loose and is maybe totally irrelevant. If you were motivated to do some research on this (and I don’t suggest it) you can quickly go down a rabbit hole of contradictions and anomalies. Someone who is self-employed but not ‘set up’ to scale apparently isn’t an entrepreneur, but someone who is pre-revenue but has a great idea and a ‘growth mindset’ is. Oh, and don’t confuse a fledgling small business owner with a startup founder… I’m baffled. I don’t care, and neither should you.
If you’re a businessperson of any kind and you want your business to do well (however you define well), you really shouldn’t use any time or mental availability on thinking about whether you’ve got what it takes to be an entrepreneur, or stress about what perceived growth mindset characteristics you think you do or don’t have.
It’s time to debunk and then forget about the entrepreneurial poster child: the risk-taking, never-sleeping, always-optimistic go-getter. You’ve heard the stories – people throwing caution to the wind on a “brilliant” idea with zero fear of failure. Failure is just learning right, well as long as it’s a ‘mindful’ failure!
The narrative that entrepreneurs gamble everything on a dream is not only tired but it doesn’t feel correct anymore – if it ever did. We should aspire to take smart decisions and calculated steps. Navigate uncertainty with a strategic and pragmatic head on our shoulders, not by blindly embracing risk and striking it off as ‘a good learning’ when you lose your investors’ or friends’ and families’ money and lay people off.
There is a narrative that the very act of starting something new is by definition a risk-taking mentality and therefore entrepreneurial, but it’s naive to the reasons or aspirations of why someone wanted, or indeed had, to create something for themselves. Did the tens of thousands of new businesses registered during the pandemic all suddenly feel like entrepreneurs when they did so, or were they reacting to a redundancy and a deflated job market?
I’ve worked with a lot of founders and in my experience, aspiring or actual founders (or small business owners!) should not spend any time whatsoever worrying if they have the right mindset or entrepreneurial attributes to succeed. If you conclude you don’t, would you stop building something you aspire to build, or waste time trying to be something you’re not. I would sincerely hope not.
Instead I suggest spending more time thinking about how you can personally make smarter, more informed business decisions every single day. Look to find support where you know you have blind spots in your knowledge and expertise, and if you’re not conscious of where you have blind spots, work with people that will give you opposing views, different ideas and brutal honesty.
Because starting and growing a business is, thankfully, not a one-size-fits-all situation. It’s about carving your own path, working to your strengths and finding ways to navigate change in impactful ways that will help you successfully grow your business.
