The Five Levels of Entrepreneurial Development

The Five Levels of Entrepreneurial Development

The road on which an entrepreneur rides on is driven by factors influences it either in a negative or positive fashion. These factors can mold your mindset in a way which may or may not fit the vessel you are trying to enter... So today I am going to share these influential 5 levels of being a true entrepreneur, we will also try to make you visualize the consequences that you may have to face if your thoughts are driving the wrong way and how you can redirect them....

Level One: The Self-Employed Mindset

   The emotional driving force behind the self-employed person is not security but a desire for greater control over his or her life, career, and destiny. Relinquishing that control to a boss every day from nine to five is not their idea of happiness, and they believe that they could do their job just as well without an employer – and perhaps without the need for other employees. They want more autonomy. They want to do things their own way. And they usually begin by creating a situation where they do the same type of work they did while an employee, but they figure out how to do it by themselves and for themselves.

   Unfortunately, many of the primary objectives of the person setting off to become an entrepreneur with the self-employment mindset are pitfalls or traps. Because they want to go it alone, they often do so at their own peril. By not taking help from others they not only cut themselves off from valuable talent, intelligence, feedback, and experience that others could offer in the form of assistance, but they also create a situation where they will never experience freedom.

   That premise of designing a business that works for its owner – rather than the owner working for it all the time – is vital for becoming a real entrepreneur versus becoming simply the most important employee of one’s own self- employed venture. Those who understand that fact can rise to the next level of entrepreneurship.

Level Two: The Managerial Perspective

Those with a managerial outlook are often in a great position to succeed as entrepreneurs, expect for two big misconceptions that lead to massive problems. Many managers believe that if a business is not working, the solution lies in hiring more employees. They throw extra bodies at the problem, but this only aggravates the situation because it fails to address the underlying root cause of the difficulty or lack of profitability. Another mistaken belief that is common to this mindset is that the route to success is through growth – not profit growth but the overall structural growth of the enterprise itself. Once again, bigger is not necessarily better unless and until the fundamentals are sound and efficient. Growing larger to fix the problems of a small business only generates a much bigger company with problems that are expanded, magnified, and much more expensive to remedy. Many managerial entrepreneurs go into bankruptcy thanks to vigorous growth, but they never figure out why.

   A third misstep common to the managerial attitude is that the entrepreneur wants to be the boss, even if that means sacrificing the talent or potential of employees. To give orders and be in charge requires no great skill or aptitude, but to be a leader – one who knows how to inspire and train others to rise to greater heights – is a rare quality. Managers who become leaders succeed because they accept the challenge and responsibility of ensuring that others under their wings also succeed and flourish.

Level Three: The Attitude of Owner/Leader

   The entrepreneur who attains the level of an owner/leader enjoys remarkable benefits by knowing how to step aside and let the business – and those employees working in it – operate as a profit center not reliant upon the owner’s constant hands-on participation. This kind of entrepreneur has created an organization that is more self-sufficient and self-sustaining, and by doing so has created more wealth, personal freedom, and free time.

   Rather than being the only person who could get the job done the best, this leader has passed that torch of responsibility and expertise along to others who now enjoy for themselves a greater level of career achievement. The owner/leader can, therefore, focus not so much on sales and revenues, but on net profits. While the business continues to run smoothly – and generate more transactions – the owner/leader concentrates on fine tuning it for increased profitability while letting others handle the day-to-day operational details.

Level Four: The Entrepreneurial Investor

   With a business that generates profits, the entrepreneur who has succeeded this far can begin to accept another exciting challenge, that of managing money so that it works to produce more money. Investing for maximum returns involves smart leverage of assets, and the entrepreneurial investor will often leverage the success of the first business to create a second or third company based on the same model or system.

   By franchising the original venture or buying other healthy businesses, the investor can get into the career of not just selling basic products and services, but of selling entire businesses. The goal, of course, is still to turn a profit. So rather than remaining at the helm of these companies the investor will buy them, ensure that they have valuable equity or attractive allure and potential, and then sell them to other entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs. The focus becomes finding, buying (and perhaps refurbishing) businesses, in the same way that a real estate investor locates homes, rehabs them, and then flips them for a profit. 

 Level Five: The True Entrepreneur

   Having learned new things every step of the way and evolved through various stages of entrepreneurial accomplishment and insight, it is possible to reach the ultimate goal and realize one’s dreams in a really life-changing way. The true entrepreneur experiences a paradigm shift that involves a four-step process of changed thinking:

#1: Idealization –  Imagine gigantic, all-encompassing dreams for creating the ideal world.

#2: Visualization – Picture the ideal world as a reality and begin to clarify this vision on a daily basis, filling in more details each day.

#3: Verbalization – Begin to put words to the dream and talk of it as if it was already happening. Talk about it to others as if it were real and continue to have a personal dialog with the ideal to make it come true

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#4: Materialization – Because the effort and intention of designing and believing in the ideal and the dream, things begin to fall into place and happen in a natural and automatic way. The idea becomes a real and tangible fact that materializes in the world and influences others while opening new doors to fresh opportunities and the birth of more dreams.

   The true entrepreneur is a dreamer whose dreams come true, and an income earner whose income is passive. Money comes automatically from profitable ventures that feed success with more success but do not require extraneous work. The money made does all the work for the entrepreneur to create more money with a snowballing effect. These women and men profit in all situations and add to their wealth by acquiring more paper assets, more profit centers, and more entrepreneurial power.