Entrepreneur or Employee?

Which one are you?

A lot of people getting involved in online marketing, whether it's CPA marketing, affiliate marketing, (same thing in my books) or internet marketing, (again same thing in my books), have the wrong wiring for it. The problem is they're employees who kind of want to be entrepreneurs but still want all the employee benefits.

That doesn't work.

An employee is someone who does not really want to take any risk. They want a steady pay check. They want a daily routine the is the same day in and day out. They want to work for a company for 25 to 30 years then retire on their company pension, moving to Florida and soaking up the sun. They don't really think outside the box much, and if they do, they might get promoted to a manager or some other management position. They're loyal people, dedicated to doing their job. They love following instructions and prefer there to be some kind of manual of what to do versus figuring it out on their own. If their pay fluctuated at all they'd have a heart attack. They're used to the norm and make up the majority of the general population.

People are programmed, almost from birth, to be employees. We have to go to school to learn the skills we need to be good employees. We have to go to college to get a degree which is supposed to ensure us a good job at a big company with a great retirement plan. That's what we're supposed to do. That's what society calls the "norm".

Entrepreneurs do not subscribe to this. Entrepreneurs do not need a steady pay check. They know that their income will fluctuate from day to day and month to month. They know that they don't have a daily routine. They solve problems daily. They have to come up with solutions to problems that nobody else has even encountered yet. They're pioneers in their niches normally. Trying to put an entrepreneur into a job that involved sitting in a cubicle doing repetitive is the same as throwing them into a maximum security jail!

Entrepreneurs know that life is a risk versus reward proposition. The more they risk, the higher the potential payoff. They accept that there's also the potential for a higher loss too. Entrepreneurs NEVER need a guarantee. They don't care about refund policies and this is all due to their wiring. Instead of trying to find a guide to do something, they write the guide, but it's not on paper, it's in their head. Every entrepreneur I know has also embraced failure as a stepping stone to success. You can knock down an entrepreneur, but they will get back up no matter how hard you hit them. They're relentless in their pursuit. For them it's not the end result that matters, it's the journey where the excitement lies.

So what are you?

If you're programmed as an employee and you kind of want to succeed as an entrepreneur, but always half ass it or never dive in head first, you're just going to struggle forever. I've seen a lot over the years and I've seen a lot of employees trying to be entrepreneurs. They simply can't. They're not wired for it.

The first sign of trouble, they jump ship and move on to try to find the "perfect existing solution".

There's nothing wrong with being an employee. Entrepreneurs need them to scale their businesses. But there is something very wrong with employees trying to be entrepreneurs when their internal wiring is always working against them. I'm not saying the conversion is impossible, but it's not easy to fight the way society brings us all up.

As I get older, I understand more and more that your mindset, (ie how you're wired), makes the most impact on your success or lack of. I'm starting to really focus on this now as technical stuff is easy once you learn it, but mindset is not.

What do you think?