Make the Jump to Being an Entrepreneur With These Tips
Hi! My name is Coach Jimmy and over the past nine years, I have made the shift from employee to entrepreneur. You see, before I get started in business, I found myself as a three time college dropout that was living back at home with my parents in my early twenties, 100 pounds overweight, and during that time I was always really frustrated because I was on somebody else’s schedule.
I remember having jobs, at the time, where I would literally have to commute an hour to and an hour from. I remember having multiple jobs where I would work one during the day and come home, eat, and go to the other job in the evening just to try and make ends meet. And I always felt like I was on somebody else’s schedule and you know a lot of it felt like busy work to me. I didn’t feel very fulfilled in the things that I was doing.
As I coach entrepreneurs, the people that come to me…so over the past nine years I have become a business coach for other people that are wanting to build extra income, some kind of an online business, that I feel like that’s where my specialty really is as a business coach. More so than even a health and fitness coach or anything else, I want to help people build businesses.
But this is the thing I’ve really come to recognize. There is a big shift in the mindset and the actions of an employee versus the actions and the mindset of the entrepreneur or trying to bridge that gap and switch. What do I mean by that?
I mean that as an employee, you show up to a job and you are given a task. “Here, I need you to data entry this. I need you to make these calls. I need you to say this thing,” and then really give it to you step by step by step and they tell you what to do. They kind of take the thinking or the creativity out of your hands and a lot of times…I mean, I guess it really depends on what your job is, but I am just talking about just the good old generic 9 to 5s that I worked. It really was, “Here is your cookie cutter. Here is your list. Go do this and come back.”
Sometimes it didn’t even matter if you did it with enthusiasm or not. I know most of the office jobs I had, there was a lack of enthusiasm. Let’s just be really honest. At least on my part!
There is no single path to success
So this is where I find that people get frustrated. So they come to me or they want to work with me in a mentor situation and I start giving them concepts, mindset concepts, work ethic concepts, but they get frustrated because they are like, “Jimmy, what am I suppose to do here?”
When you are an entrepreneur, I can’t always just provide somebody, “Here are the exact words to say. Here are the steps in the order you are going to do them,” and it’s not like an assembly line. I think a lot of people in the online business space or those in network marketing even, or any kind of entrepreneurial thing, everybody is looking for that secret system. I want to know one plus two plus three…one, two, three, gets to me the four.
It doesn’t always work that way and people get really frustrated because they are used to going to a job and being given an assignment. They do the assignment. They turn it in. They get a paycheck. Bing bang boom. Bing bang boom. Entrepreneurship doesn’t really work that way.
But on the flip side, you get to be creative. I can show you exactly the steps that I did. I can say, “I did this and then I did this and then I did this,” and you can do stuff one step, two step, three, and it didn’t take you to four or it may not work at first. For a lot of people, that’s really frustrating. In fact, I went through that in my business. I was watching what other people were doing and I was like, “Well, she did this, this, and this and now she is making this much money and I am doing this, this, and this and it’s not working.”
People get really frustrated because they are used to going to a job and being given an assignment. They do the assignment. They turn it in. They get a paycheck. Entrepreneurship doesn’t work that way.
So, we tend to think that there is something wrong with us, but there is so many variables. Was I using my voice or was I trying to imitate somebody else? Because if somebody else created something and I just imitate and try to be somebody else, it’s not going to come across with the same honesty, with the same impact. That person’s audience maybe different than my audience. That people that I am reaching may take these things differently.
I had to be willing to put my spin on things so when I mentor people, and I love mentoring people, what I really do is teach concepts.
When I teach in mindsets, where I talk about work ethics, when I talk about showing up every day, when I talk about battling resistance, when I talk about so many different things that people get frustrated it’s like, “Jimmy, tell me exactly what to say. Tell me exactly what to write in that email. Tell me exactly what to put in that Facebook post. Tell me exactly how to use Twitter or Instagram or Facebook to create some kind of income,” and I can’t.
Execution is what matters
I really don’t think that that exists. I think in the entrepreneurial world, it’s how you execute it. I think the concepts are the same. That I can learn something from people that I have learned from. Chalene Johnson or Gary Veinerchuk or Bo Eason or Brian Tracy or Jim Rohn or Darren Hardy, but the way that I execute it is going to be different than how they execute it or I am just going to look like I am trying to be a clone of that person.
If I am trying to be a clone to that person, why would anybody try to follow me?
They could go follow that person.
They don’t need me to try to be that person.
I am going to continue to just be genuinely me because I know that there is an audience out there that is really going to resonate with genuine me instead of edited me.
So as you are making that shift into the online world or to an entrepreneurial world, maybe you are creating a product or you are writing an eBook or you are doing a podcast. I mean even something like a podcast or a YouTube show, don’t just try to make your podcast a carbon copy of the podcast that you are the biggest fan of because it’s just going to look like a cheap imitation.
But what you don’t realize, and where you probably sell yourself super short, is that you realize if you would just execute in your greatness and what makes you unique and what makes you different than the people that you follow that what even makes you different than the mentor you choose to follow, you are going to impact people that that mentor can’t.
That person with millions of followers or so many downloads on their YouTube channel or on their podcast, you think, “Oh, that’s worked for them so I need to become them,” and trust me guys, I have been caught in the same trap before.
Be yourself
So what I have learned to do is learn concepts from these people that I really admire, but use my life experience, my personality, my strengths to talk about my take on that and you can do the exact same thing, but that’s the difference between the entrepreneur. You have got to be willing to tweak things. You got to be willing to experiment. You have got to be willing to try things for a long time without necessarily an immediate return on investment.
Sometimes it’s, “How long will I keep doing this?” Just like this right here, this streaming series on YouTube. I have some videos that get a lot of views and some that are crickets, but I show up every day and I am just going to continue to be me. I am going to continue to work on my skill set, allow people to push me, and work on me, but I am going to continue to not censor myself with you.
I am going to continue to just be genuinely me because I know that there is an audience out there that is really going to resonate with genuine me instead of edited me or Jimmy trying to be Gary Vee or Jimmy trying to sound like Chalene or Jimmy trying to redo what Darren Hardy has done.
People are looking for you
I just got to be me and it took me…I was really scared of that for a long time because I didn’t think I was good enough. All those people had resumes and skins on the wall, how could I compete with that? How could I compete with somebody who has millions of followers or making millions of dollars? Wouldn’t it be better for me just to try to be like them because they have proven their success in that? And I am telling you, there is a trap in that.
There really is because as awesome as all those people I have just listed are, there is going to be somebody that resonates with you because you are you and that doesn’t resonate with those people that are “successful” already.
So sometimes we got to shift out of employee to entrepreneur mindset if you really want to make that shift. There is nothing wrong with being employee. I don’t think that entrepreneurship is for everybody.
I think that there are people that are amazing employees and it’s not like one is better than the other. I am just talking to those of you that are trying to make the shift so don’t expect to get steps one through four right here and it’s always going to end up in the same thing. This isn’t the conveyor belt. This isn’t a…there is not one system that’s just proven to always work.
We deal with people and, people, that’s the variable so everybody is a little bit different.
So keep going. Be you. Be willing to be you boldly. Take concepts that you learn from any of your favorite mentors or business people, but put your spin on it.
What I would love to hear from you in the comments today is what it is that you are working on. What is it that you are going to find a way to put your spin on?
There may already be another one of those in the market place. That’s okay because you are going to do it different. So share with me in the comments today, what it is that you want to put your spin on. Is it a Youtube show? Is it a podcast? Is it an eBook? Is it a physical book? What is that thing that you are working on to take and attack in a whole new way?
I hope you found this video helpful today and if you have, please ‘like’ it and share it with somebody else. Until next time, keep doing you and impacting others’ lives.