Turn Your Passion Into a Paycheck

Training #1: Make the Critical Mindset Shift from Employee to

Entrepreneur and Develop the Skills of Entrepreneurship that Make the Difference Between Failure and Success

STEPHEN PALMERAuthentic Purpose Coach

Why Shift to Entrepreneurship?• You want to control your destiny.

• You want to live on purpose.

• You want to create and make your dreams a reality.

• You want to control your income and lifestyle.

• You want to innovate.

• You want to make the world a better place.

It’s Far More than a Title or Role Switch!• Entrepreneurship is hard! (But that’s also why it’s worth

it.)

• It takes commitment, dedication, perseverance, tenacity, resilience.

• It requires that you completely shift your mindset and how you spend your time.

• To truly succeed at entrepreneurship, you must become a completely different person than you are today.

16 Critical Mindset Shifts to Succeed as an Entrepreneur

Shift #1: From Work to Purpose

• As an employee, you work in a job for a paycheck. As an entrepreneur, you build a business to fulfill your life’s purpose.

• As an employee, you care about your “rights” as a worker and work-life balance. As an entrepreneur, there’s no difference between work and life. Your work is your purpose!

• Entrepreneurs willingly work longer and harder because they’re fueled by purpose and vision.

• Entrepreneurs seek to build a life from which they don’t want or need a vacation.

Work for Purpose

Shift #2: From Avoiding Responsibility

to Embracing It

• As an employee, there’s always someone else to blame when things go wrong—either up or down the chain of command.

• As an entrepreneur, “the buck stops here.” You take full responsibility for your decisions, business, results, and life.

• Entrepreneurs accept responsibility gladly—because it means creating the possibility and power to change things.

• Ownership = power.

Embrace Responsibility

Shift #3: From Avoiding Failure

to Learning from It

• Employees hate making mistakes and failing. They want to be sheltered from the humiliation, shame, and pain.

• Entrepreneurs understand that failure is the only way to learn.

• This doesn’t mean being foolhardy or taking unwise and unnecessary risks. Mitigate your risk to the best of your ability.

• Never wallow in self-pity or beat yourself up with self-criticism. Get up each time you fall, with more experience and wisdom.

• Learn to fail wisely. Don’t take risks from which you can’t recover. Perform small experiments.

Learn from Failure

Shift #4: From Time Clock

to Outcome

• Employees orient their time at work around the time clock. When it’s closing time, it doesn’t matter if their work is done or not.

• Entrepreneurs orient their time and energy around outcomes. They know they have to meet goals and objectives in order to build their business and get paid.

• Entrepreneurs have no time clock—they work as long and as hard as it takes to create the desired outcome (sales, revenue, growth).

Focus on Outcomes

Shift #5: From Activity to Results

(Working Hard to Working Smart)

• Employees get paid for activity, not necessarily productivity.

• Their job is often removed from tangible business results. They don’t connect the dots between their role/job/activity and legitimate, measurable results.

• The entrepreneur must produce actual results!

• It’s not about working long hours to pat yourself on the back for “working hard”—it’s about maximizing every minute of every hour to create the results you want.

Focus on Results

Shift #6: From Doing What You’re Told

to Making Decisions

• Employees don’t have to think much about their job (at least, the thinking required is relatively limited). They show up and do what their told.

• Entrepreneurs must make all the decisions about how to spend their time, where to invest their money, what their business and marketing strategies will be, etc.

• You must learn to obsessively focus on the most important things—the things that will get you actual results. Don’t fiddle around with “busy work” that makes you feel like you’re doing something but isn’t helping you progress.

• What’s my next most important step? How am I creating real value?• Become an expert decision-maker. Consider your options, then decide.

Learn from whatever happens.

Make Smart Decisions

Shift #7: From Steady Paycheck

to Accepting Uncertainty

• Employees love getting a steady paycheck they can depend on.

• Entrepreneurs often don’t know when they’re going to get paid. Your income will fluctuate—and sometimes you won’t get paid at all! You must learn to get used to this.

• Learning to deal with this is both an inside job of learning to cultivate inner peace despite circumstances, as well as an outside job of learning to manage your money and cash flow.

• Learn to save a percentage of your income to help you through the lean months.

Accept Uncertainty

Shift #8: From Balance to Projects

• As an employee, your schedule is generally fixed. You know what to plan for each day, which makes it relatively easy to create work-life balance on an ongoing basis.

• As an entrepreneur, your life is driven by specific projects. This means burning the midnight oil for a season in order to finish a project.

• Instead of seeking balance, entrepreneurs believe that to excel in one area of their lives, others will suffer. They accept that areas of their lives rotate through seasons.

• Finish enough valuable projects and you achieve true freedom—not just balance!

Become Project-Oriented

Shift #9: From Immediate Gratification

to Long-Term Payoff

• Employees want the immediate gratification of getting paid now, thus giving up a potentially big payout later.

• Entrepreneurs sacrifice immediate gratification. They care less about what they get paid today on a steady basis than they do about the long-term payoff (both in terms of wealth and freedom).

Work for the Long-Term Payoff

• In the 1960s, Harvard sociologist Edward Banfield set out to discover why certain people become financially independent and others do not.

• His assumption was that the answer would be found in factors such as family background, education, intelligence, influential contacts, or other similar factors. He discovered instead a particular mindset shared by the wealthiest, most successful individuals.

• He called this mindset a “long time perspective.” The most successful individuals, he found, considered the future with every decision. The study showed that the longer the time horizon a person considered while planning and acting, the more likely he or she would be to succeed, financially and otherwise.

Work for the Long-Term Payoff

“Wealthy people routinely plant seeds that won’t bear fruit for months or even

years.” –Roy H. Williams

Work for the Long-Term Payoff

Shift #10: From Perfectionism

to Production

• Employees are often perfectionists in order to please their bosses and avoid bad performance reviews.

• Entrepreneurs understand that shipping a lousy product is better than never shipping a perfect product.

• Ship, ship, SHIP! Get the project out the door and into the hands of customers.

• Learn to accept good enough. There’s no such thing as perfect anyway! Think in terms of “minimum viable product” (MVP).

• Improve your process and product through feedback and iteration.

Focus on Production

Shift #11: From What You Care About to What Others Care About

• Employees tend to focus on what they want. Artists focus on what they care about.

• Entrepreneurs must learn to focus on what other people care about.

• It’s not enough for you to be passionate about something—other people have to care.

• You have to package your passion in a way that creates value for other people.

• What do people want that you are uniquely qualified to deliver?

• The single most important skill you can develop as an entrepreneur is the ability to get inside the minds and hearts of your customers.

Create Value for Others

Shift #12: From Pleasing Your Boss

to Pleasing Your Customers

• As an employee, you work to please your boss, regardless of the impact on customers.

• As an entrepreneur, your boss is your customers. Everything you do must be done with their needs and wants in mind.

• You are on the front lines. You are responsible for creating value for your customers. You’re not just doing internal work anymore.

• Your performance review is your profits, and profits are evidence of value creation. If you’re not making a profit, you’re not creating value for customers!

• You must learn to never take anything personally. Your customers don’t care about you—they care about themselves.

Please Your Customers

Shift #13: From Performing

to Selling

• As an employee, your paycheck was based on your performance in your particular role/job.

• As an entrepreneur, your paycheck is determined based on how good you are at selling.

• NOTHING happens in your business until something gets sold.

• Study the art and science of persuasion. Read tons of books on sales and persuasion. Learn how to listen and give people what they want.

• Again, don’t take anything personally. Learn from rejection.

Become an Expert at Sales

• Track your sales numbers and know them like the back of your hand.

• How many people do you need to approach in order to make a sale? This removes the emotion from the equation. You just play the numbers game.

• “If you take care of your numbers, your numbers will take care of you.” –Ken Blanchard

• This is how I’ve survived door-to-door sales and cold-calling.

Become an Expert at Sales

Shift #14: From Knowing Your Job

to Knowing Your Numbers

• As an employee, you have to know your job well.

• As an entrepreneur, you have to know your numbers well: revenues, expenses, gross profit, profit margin, cost of goods sold, marketing expenses, cash flow, etc.

• Your numbers are the pulse of your business. If you don’t have your finger on the pulse, you have no idea how well you’re performing.

• Numbers hold you accountable to reality. They prevent self-deception.

Know Your Numbers

Shift #15: From Tasks to Systems

• Employees tend to be task-oriented. They perform the job they’re given, without seeing how it fits into a bigger context. It’s the “to-do list” mentality.

• As an entrepreneur, you must learn to build systems that create predictable work flow and outcomes.

• Employees haul buckets. Entrepreneurs build pipelines.

• Systems give you leverage so you can move beyond earning dollars per hour.

Build Systems

Shift #16: From DIY to Delegation

• Employees tend to have a “do-it-yourself” mentality.

• Entrepreneurs learn how to create leverage through delegation.

• This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have employees. It can also mean hiring independent contractors. (Upwork.com)

• Build systems, then hire and train people to run the systems for you.

• Online technology gives you the ability to create massive leverage without having tons of employees.

Build Systems & Delegate

16 Mindset Shifts Recap1. Work not just to earn money, but

to fulfill a purpose.2. Embrace responsibility to increase

your power to create your ideal life.

3. Don’t be afraid to fail. Embrace failure as the most valuable way to learn.

4. Forget the time clock—focus on outcomes.

5. Don’t just be active—create real results. Work smart, not hard.

6. Nobody is going to tell you what to do. You are responsible for making the decisions in your business.

7. Accept uncertainty and plan for it.8. Accept the temporary imbalance

of working long, hard hours to complete projects. Work for long-term freedom, not immediate work-life balance.

9. Work for a long-term payoff, not immediate gratification.

10. Don’t be such a perfectionist that you wait too long to ship. Create minimum viable products, then improve them over time.

11. Nobody cares about what you want! People only care about what they want. Get inside the minds and hearts of your customers and give them what they want.

12. Your customers are your boss. The better you please them, the more money you’ll make.

13. It’s not enough to be a good performer at a job—you must be an expert at sales. Nothing happens in your business until something gets sold.

14. You can’t just know your job—you must know the numbers in your business.

15. You can’t just perform tasks—you must build systems.

16. You can’t do everything yourself—you must learn to delegate.

16 Mindset Shifts Recap

10 Vital Skills to Develop to Be a Successful Entrepreneur

Skill #1: Self-Awareness

• Entrepreneurs get into big trouble when they delude themselves.

• Delusion is caused by over-confidence (watch “Shark Tank” to see many examples). A little humility goes a long way.

• It’s good to trust yourself—but you must always submit and hold yourself accountable to the realities of markets and numbers. Numbers don’t lie and they don’t get emotional.

• You don’t get to decide what works and what doesn’t! The market decides.

Cultivate Self-Awareness

Skill #2: Self-Reliance

• Entrepreneurship requires a special combination of boldness and humility.

• There’s no cavalry coming to save you! You and you alone are responsible for your business.

• Learn from coaches and mentors, but understand that they’re not vested in your business. They can give advice, but you must make the decisions.

• Trust yourself. Make decisions and learn from them.

• Understand that the ultimate purpose isn’t for you to build the business, but for the business to build you.

Develop Self-Reliance

Skill #3: Resilience

• As an entrepreneur, you’re no longer shielded from the bad things that can happen in a business. You’re on the front lines.

• So, so much can go wrong. Your projections will be wrong. Your expectations will be violated. People will hurt and disappoint you. Suppliers won’t come through for you.

• You have to learn to take things in stride and be quick on your feet.

• Understand that every adverse situation is an opportunity for growth and learning.

• Your ability to deal with your emotions is far more important than your ability to make wise and strategic decisions, or any other skill.

Be Resilient

“Entrepreneurs choose a life of hardship. They choose a life that will hopefully be marked by joy, achievement, laughter and

satisfaction, but will also inevitably be marked by confusion, chaos, change, fear and disappointment. This is true of

everyone’s lives, of course, but the entrepreneur chooses a life in which he or she is very likely to have higher highs and lower

lows, in which the peaks of joy and troughs of dread are likely to be more vivid than if he or she made a safer choice.”

-Eric Greitenshttps://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243910

Be Resilient

Skill #4: Learning

• Entrepreneurs have to be learners to survive. If you don’t learn quickly, your business dies.

• Your business cannot grow at a faster pace than you grow (or if it does, it won’t survive).

• The greatest enemies of learning: ego (needing to be right), “expert’s mind,” stubbornness, taking things personally, fear, complacence.

• The greatest contributors of learning: humility, “beginner’s mind,” flexibility, detachment, willingness to experiment, curiosity.

• You don’t have to make your own mistakes to learn. Learn from other people’s mistakes and successes by reading!

Become a Learner

Skill #5: Focus

• Starting something has relatively little value. It’s finishing that matters.

• To finish, you have to focus. Don’t succumb to “SQUIRREL! syndrome.”

• Focus on what you do best and on what creates value for customers.

• Learn to say no. “People think focus means saying 'yes' to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying 'no' to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” –Steve Jobs

• 80/20 Rule. Focus on the 20 percent of activities that drive 80 percent of your success. What will make me money?

• What’s the most important thing I need to accomplish today? This week?

Learn to Focus

Skill #6: Prioritization

• As an entrepreneur, you will constantly have hundreds of things that can demand your attention and energy. You must learn to prioritize, then focus on your priorities.

• Don’t get lost in busy work. You don’t get paid for activity—you get paid for productivity.

• Does this create value for my customers? Will this grow my business? If no, set it aside.

• Another word for “prioritize” is “discipline.” Prioritizing—and sticking to your priorities—takes discipline.

Learn to Prioritize

Skill #7: Goal-Setting & Planning

• As an entrepreneur, you’re taking your life into your own hands. Owning your life starts with setting goals and writing them down.

• If you drift through life, your business will drift—and eventually sink.

• Your business will grow intentionally to the extent that you grow intentionally.

• Set annual, quarterly, and monthly income targets—and keep track.

• Think long-term and short-term.

Set Goals with Detailed Plans

“Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”

• 84 percent had no goals

• 13 percent had goals but they weren’t written down

• Only 3 percent had written goals and plans

10 Years Later

The 13 percent with unwritten goals were earning twice, on average, of the 84 percent who had no goals.

The 3 percent with written goals were earning, on average, TEN TIMES as much as the other 97 percent of the class COMBINED!

Skill #8: Persuasion

• Again, nothing happens in your business until something gets sold. Until you have marketing and sales teams, you are responsible for marketing and selling!

• You must become a lifelong student of the art and science of persuasion. Read lots of books, plus test and measure.

• Persuasion is psychology. What makes human beings do what they do? What motivates people? What do people fear? What do people want?

• You must learn to communicate persuasively both verbally and in writing.

Master the Art & Science of Persuasion

• Three forms of persuasion in business:

1. Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to inform customers of your offers.

2. Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by a company to potential customers.

3. Sales: One-on-one, personal.

• Marketing: Spending time (website, content creation, social media, SEO, etc.). Message.

• Advertising: Spending money (Facebook ads, banner ads, radio and TV ads, etc.). Medium.

Master the Art & Science of Persuasion

Skill #9: Financial Intelligence

• Employees (middle-class) and entrepreneurs (wealthy) have completely different vocabularies and definitions around money. (For example, is your home an asset or a liability?)

• Until your business is big enough to have an accounting department, you must handle your own finances.

• Set up a legal entity and a separate business bank account.

• Do your accounting religiously!

• Have constant access to your numbers (balance sheet, profit and loss statement, etc.).

Develop Financial Intelligence

Skill #10: Systems Thinking

• The vital contribution of true entrepreneurs is building systems that transcend and outlast them.

• Building systems is creating duplicable, documented processes that anyone can follow.

• Entrepreneurship is about leverage, and systems are how you create leverage. Systems run without your direct involvement or physical presence.

• Even if you’re a solopreneur, you need systems (you primarily leverage technology).

Become a Systems Thinker

3 Business Personalities:Entrepreneur, Manager, &

TechnicianSource: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

• The visionary, dreamer, and catalyst for change. He constantly lives in the future.

• The innovator who constantly asks, “How can this be done better?”

• The creative personality who loves creating probabilities out of possibilities.

• Craves control.

• Often creates havoc around him.

• To the Entrepreneur, most people are problems that get in the way of the dream.

The Entrepreneur

• The pragmatic planner who loves creating order and predictability out of chaos. He lives in the past.

• Craves order.

• Where the Entrepreneur thrives on change, the Manager clings to the status quo.

• Where the Entrepreneur sees the opportunities in events, the Manager sees the problems.

• The Entrepreneur builds a house and the instant he’s done begins planning the next one. The Manager builds a house and lives in it forever.

• The Manager cleans up the mess behind the Entrepreneur.

The Manager

• The doer. “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” Resolute individualist. Lives in the present.

• The Technician is happy as long as he’s working—but only on one thing at a time. As a result, he mistrusts those he works for. Everyone gets in the Technician’s way.

• Suspicious of lofty ideas or abstractions. He’s not interested in ideas—he’s interested in “how to do it.”

• The Entrepreneur dreams, the Manager frets, the Technician ruminates.

The Technician

1. The myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs.

2. The fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work.

The Entrepreneurial Myth

• To be a successful entrepreneur, you need all three personalities, in an optimal balance.

• The Entrepreneur must be in charge! If the Technician is in charge (most businesses), you’ll end up doing a lot of work that shouldn’t be done.

• Dream as the Entrepreneur, create systems as the Manager, do the work as the Technician—in that order.

You Need All Three

Recommended Reading:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

• Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki

• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber