Are You a Salaried Entrepreneur? by Cindy Stradling CSP, CPC
As a business employee, you may believe you have little influence on the decisions that are made about how the business is run. Depending upon your particular situation; this may or may not be true. However, there are reasons you should act like an entrepreneur even when you don’t own the business. Take a look at some of the benefits you can realize by having an entrepreneurial mindset instead of an employee mindset.
- You’ll make better decisions. When you adopt an attitude as though you own the business, you make decisions based on the best interest of the business, considering far more pieces of the puzzle than when you act like an employee.
- You’ll share ideas. With an employee mindset, you might be reluctant to share your ideas for improving a process or reducing costs. But, if you’re acting like a business owner, you are eager to share your ideas for improvement, even if some of these don’t pan out.
- You’ll learn more. With the attitude of an entrepreneur, you’ll take every opportunity afforded to you to learn about the business, the industry and leadership.
- You’ll be more cost conscious. With an entrepreneur mindset, you won’t be wasteful with money. Instead, you’ll look for the potential return on every investment before making it. However, when you see true return on investment or a significant bottom line improvement that comes from spending a little cash, you’ll be eager to spend it, and able to articulate justification for spending it.
Acting like an entrepreneur even when you aren’t one can offer some very valuable learning experiences, and can entirely change the way you look at your job. It will likely make you a better employee, a more thoughtful manager and a better financial steward. It might also get you promoted, as those in the chain of command notice your efforts.
Even if acting like an entrepreneur doesn’t bring you any rewards in your current job, you can be sure that it will provide a learning experience that will help to prepare you to run your own business one day if that is something you are intending to do.