“What is the Entrepreneurial Paradigm shift and how do you make the shift”?

To understand the paradigm shift one needs to first understand the entrepreneur. We have taken a look at some “myths” and some “musts”; let us look a little deeper.

In most cases the new entrepreneur is one that is in transition from employee to employer and more often than not is the “doer” – the technician within the business. If we look at the situations of those people in the stories told in Chapter 1 we will see that Joe, Sally, Betty, George and Sam came from an environment where they were “doing a job”. They were employees. The question is not whether they did a good job when they were employed. In fact you will find that because of their very nature they will have with out exception done an excellent job and taken their job very seriously. They would have been committed to doing the job to their best ability, to ensure that they achieved a level of satisfaction that satisfies the “doer” in all of them. The question is what do they know about business itself? These individuals have been involved in a portion of the whole process within the business operation. Each of them did not have a complete picture of all the elements of the company at which they were employees nor were they exposed to how these elements work and mesh together. And as such do not have an understanding of all the components. This is where the first mistakes are made. The “doer” will try to accomplish those “jobs” with which they are familiar and thus will be caught up in the process of production. “I have to make the product, I have to make sure that the pies are baked or the gutters are manufactured or the computer is repaired”. While the process of building the business goes unattended.

This tells us that the new entrepreneur is still working at his “job” (in the business). There hasn’t really been a move away from what they were doing for their previous employer. Notice I said previous employer – the new employer (themselves), has now placed even more demands on them to complete the job, and they have very few hours if any to do anything else. The focus is totally on doing the job, burying themselves in the task and moving far away from the concept of building the business. There has been no movement from employee to employer – there is a transfer of employment from one “job to another” that is very evident but they remain doing the same tasks / job function that they where previously.

This type of approach will eventually ware you down. The exhaustion that you will experience trying to do everything yourself will manifest itself in poor health or relationships gone bad and most often both. You will crash – the job will become intense, boring and soon you will find that the job is running you and you are not running the business. And of course you will realize that running your own business is not what it is made out to be. You will wake up one morning and you will hate the very thought of having to get up and “work at this job” another day. Eventually you will stop and when you stop; the business stops – it will eventually fail. Some may go on and push themselves harder and harder trying to do the job – but those who go down this road will find that eventually their health will fail them and they will not be able to get up in the morning do the “job”.

The excitement of entrepreneurship is gone, its dead, and the individual looses self esteem and courage, ending in total despair.

For the entrepreneur who is working “in” the business, it becomes just another job – working “in” your business and not “on” the business will lead to feelings of failure.

Firstly we must tell you that hard work is the basis for all entrepreneurial endeavours. Developing entrepreneurial thought processes is a shift in the way we think. When you were employed in your job you would be thinking of that job function and how to do your job to the best of your ability. Being trapped in a job function leads to a myopic view of the whole business. This of course is no fault of yours it is the nature of the employment beast. When you are stuck in a job function you do not get to see the “big picture” – the whole company and all its functions from start to finish. Seldom does our thought process look for new opportunity especially business opportunity, this is left to the senior managers, board members, company owners and entrepreneurs.

When a business opportunity is found or developed, it takes a lot of hard work to get the business going and keep it going. I once heard a marketing consultant tell a group of aspiring young entrepreneurs that business is just like “magic” and with virtually no effort you can get rich very quickly. So easy to tell others how simple it is, but the reality is – you have to be able to roll up your sleeves and make it happen.

The Entrepreneurial paradigm shift is the shift from a job focused approach to a business focused approach. The move in your mind must be away from doing the job within the business to running the business. Developing the business rather than the products within the business is the job of the entrepreneur. Unfortunately in many cases the technical side of you will want to focus your attention on product development and not business development.

Now we have a better understanding of the standard entrepreneurial approach and the resultant failure that this approach is destined for, we can look towards making some fundamental changes. The paradigm shift!!!!!!