1. Mentality/philosophy
The main difference between an entrepreneur and employee is their mentality or philosophy about financial freedom and security.
Entrepreneurs believe in financial freedom; they prefer managing or doing their own business, and controlling their own resources. Employees on the other hand, believe in financial security; a stable and constant cash flow of income from their employers in the form of salaries tips, incentives, and bonuses. While entrepreneurs work to realize their own dreams, Employees work to grow the dreams and aspirations of their employers.
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2. Mode of operation
Entrepreneurs understand that there are times they have to stay and even carry out business operations without money. They do not wait until the lights are green before striking a deal. Most go as far as working for free so as to meet their objectives.
Employees are trained with the objective of being paid for every service rendered, even services meant for their personal development and growth. This way, they miss the point; working for free in order to become financially free later.
Entrepreneurs are people who see opportunities, galvanize resources, making the opportunities a reality without necessarily using their own money; they operate without money. Take the example of entrepreneurs involved in multilevel marketing or pyramidal schemes commonly known as network marketing. These are entrepreneurs with business ideas but no money. Hence, they are able to use other people’s money to run their business, and in turn pay their members in bits. It is not uncommon to see millions of people registering and investing in online network marketing platforms, in reality, these people are promoting the business of the entrepreneur, the owners of these platforms.
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3. Point of focus opportunities vs resources
Employees are of the school of thought which believes that money is the prerequisite of starting a business. This explains why employees spend all their life working for money.
They have the impression that, after accumulating so much money from their savings, they will open the business of their dream. Unfortunately, less than 5% of employees end up achieving this goal because along the line, debts, liabilities, and other commitments end up engulfing them, making it difficult to have any savings from their earnings.
Conversely, Entrepreneurs focus on looking for opportunities, and when they do, they are able to use resources other than theirs to make their opportunities become a reality. Some sources of income for entrepreneurs include;
- Business partnership with individuals and co-operations,
- Business grants,
- Other people’s money (OPM).
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4. Management styles
Leadership styles of entrepreneurs are uniquely different from that of employees. Entrepreneurs are business leaders who see all workers as partners, and believe in us not I. Business does not revolve around them; they assign roles to other workers, and believe others have something to offer. Entrepreneurs are team value oriented.
On the other hand, employees behave like dictators and business rulers. They order people around, act as bosses and use payment as a source of motivation, in the end, they ruin the business.
5. Attitude towards learning
The cup of an entrepreneur is never full. They believe learning never ends; this explains why entrepreneurs know a little about a lot of fields. They keep learning and trying new things, and no matter how often they fail they hardly give up. Their past failures sum up to be a wealth of experience for the future. The Bill gates, Dangote, Robert kiyosaki, Donald J Trump and others are still learning a lot about new field the plan to invest in.
Employees on their part are specialists, they know a lot about a little. Employees are paid not to make mistakes. That is why they resign or are fired when the make mistakes.
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6. Accountability
It is because of lack of accountability that most people are afraid to start up their own businesses, and instead prefer to stay in their position as employees. They fear failing and fear taking responsibility or risk. Unfortunately, they take risk for their employers without knowing. In this way, they make their employers richer while they remain stagnant.
Entrepreneurs take responsibility for their actions, take business risk, accept their failures, learn and celebrate when they succeed.
7. View of success
Employees see success as an event. When they succeed, they celebrate and forget how far they have come. Success for them is momentary. Any hit they make is invested in liabilities and luxury. They turn to mimic rich people even as they fully know how indebted they are.
Entrepreneurs for their part see success as a process not an event. They are consistently consistent because they know momentary consistency results to eventful success. Entrepreneurs know “success is not final and failure is not fatal, what count is the courage to continue, (Wilson Churchill). When entrepreneurs make early hits, they re-invest more in assets than liabilities with the intension that assets will fetch them more success- the entrepreneurial mindset.
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My take;
Financial security is good, but financial freedom is best. After working under people for years, it’s good to start making plans of becoming your own boss. Cross the bridge into entrepreneurship. If you can’t cross and cut the rope between employee and entrepreneurship, then keep your job and create your own business.
But to be completely free financially, you have to cut the rope. As the saying goes, “It is freedom that is true wealth, not some pieces of silver and gold.”
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