The Entrepreneur Mindset Articles | Entrepreneur

By: Richard Butler

In my last article I wrote about the employee mindset - which is limited

Another type of mindset we have is the Entrepreneurial Mindset. This is a mindset of possibilities, of endless ideas, creativity and freedom

But what is an entrepreneur – let’s see a few definitions:

*  Innovator. One who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity.
www.onlinewbc.gov/docs/starting/glossary.html

* One who assumes the financial risk of the initiation, operation, and management of a given business or undertaking.
www.business.gov/phases/launching/are_you_ready/glossary.html

* A person who takes the risk of organizing and operating a new business venture. (This is an attitude that can be of value in more traditional employment as well.)
www.acceleratoronline.com/viewpage.asp

* Someone who attempts to profit by risk and initiative.
www.scottish-enterprise.com/sedotcom_home/help/help-glossary.htm

I think the following words are essential, recognizes opportunity, take advantage, risk, initiative 

To me these are people who are alive and living life, they are willing to take risks, take the initiative and take action. They recognize opportunity and do something about it. 

The entrepreneur differs from others because:

They are creative
They have a can do and will succeed attitude
They are full of energy
They are constantly looking on how to expand

Are they risk takers?

That’s a double sided coin really, they take calculated risks, however many reduce risk by not putting their eggs all in one basket. That is to say they know they need multiple sources of income to succeed. 

Now think of the employee with his/her single source of income – how risky is that? Perhaps this is your “ah ha” moment!

Look at Richard Branson and his Virgin Brand – they guy is into everything – music, air travel, rail travel, mobile communications. Is he an expert in everyone – probably not but he has the ideas and then gets the right people in to run his businesses. This is one key that is very important when running your own business – do what you know best and get other people to run the other aspects. 

So if you have a great business mind use that, let someone else run the day to day operations, let the experts advice you on the communications market – don’t try and be a jack of all trades, after all they do say “jack of all trades – master of none”

Do I need degrees and diplomas to be an entrepreneur?

 No many, many entrepreneurs left school very young or even dropped out of college (Branson and Gates respectively). What they did have is common sense and being able to see opportunities when they appeared. They did some research and then took action – the key to all of this is to plan and take action

Are there risks? 

Of course there are. Remember you have to have a plan before undertaking a business, you have to know why you are doing it and what you want to achieve. If you simply rush into it you are doomed. 

You have to take some risk but you minimise it as much as you can, by research and planning. However you don’t take too long on doing this either.

What’s the next step?

 
Start to open your mind to possibilities. Take the “it’s not a plastic bag” idea.

 Someone thought up of creating an eco friendly bag and put that logo on it, guess what – it was picked up by a celeb, and now everyone wants one of those bags. This is an example of taking action and the rest as they say is now making history (and money)