Running personal development courses and public speaking courses means I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who want to take their business to the next level. In the current climate, we’re seeing a rise of the passionate entrepreneur, the person who wants to create a disruption in their field and disrupt business in Australia.
The conditions have never been better. We’re seeing companies like Uber and Air B’n’B turning the traditional transport and accommodation on their heads. We have social media platforms such as Facebook and You Tube providing a platform for people to share a message with the world in minutes. In fact, today marks the 25th anniversary of the internet being opened up to the world! Thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s vision, we’re now a global village.
What is a Passionate Entrepreneur?
The word entrepreneur is thrown around a lot these days, it’s become cool. Many people believe that after setting up an ABN and a Facebook page they can call themselves an entrepreneur, and they start going to networking events talking about the residual income they’ll be generating while sitting on a beach in Thailand.
No.
A truly passionate entrepreneur is someone who spends their whole life living their passion! They have a passion for making a difference to the world, and enjoy serving other people. They have a fear of retirement! They have balance across all areas of their life, but they love Monday’s. Gary Vaynerchuk calls Monday his game day. After spending the weekend with his family and watching sports, Monday is his opportunity to pull on a jersey.
Entrepreneurial Vision
Every entrepreneur who follows his or her passion with every cell of their body and has achieved great success has one thing in common: Vision.
During Entrepreneur Now we spend a lot of time talking about the importance of having a vision, and we put a lot of work into creating a vision. Why?
We do this because humans need a vision to follow. If you look at some of the greatest leaders, visionaries such as Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, they had a vision that they held onto and used to inspire the masses. Without a vision to follow, trying to get a team of people to work together can be like herding cats!
When your vision is your passion and you can feel it in your heart, you will be able to sell your team on your purpose, and they will buy into your vision. Once you have this key ingredient, it won’t matter what criticism you receive or how many people give you stats on small businesses failing, because you will be bulletproof.
Entrepreneurial Learning and Growth
A business will never outperform the psychology or skill level of the leader. Therefore, it’s essential as an entrepreneur to be working on yourself. You need to release any emotions that are keeping you stuck so you can tap into the resources and opportunities around you.
How do you do this? You get a coach!
If you have a good coach they will hold onto your vision and keep you accountable and moving towards your goals. Your coach is outside of your bubble, and they’re not emotionally invested in your success. Remember, when emotion goes up, intelligence goes down!
So often I see entrepreneurs who want to be coaches put together a solid business plan and have great ideas for their business, but they have no clients. The self-talk around not being good enough starts up, and before you know it they have given up and gone back to full-time employment. This happens because they’re not receiving coaching!
If a coach doesn’t receive coaching themselves, they’re saying they fundamentally don’t believe in the service they’re offering. Prospective clients pick this up at an energetic level, and choose not to receive coaching with them.
It’s crucially important for entrepreneurs to continue to grow by having someone who objectively keeps them accountable. As I’m a bit of a troublemaker, my coaches and mentors have their work cut out for them keeping all my ideas in check!
Entrepreneurial State
For many entrepreneurs, their primary interest in is using their business end entrepreneurial skills to give back to the community. They often establish social enterprises – an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being.
A fantastic example of this is in Brisbane. In 2014 a crazy idea to put washers and dryers in the back of a van and wash clothes for homeless people for free led to Orange Sky Laundry being born. The concept has grown to over 260 volunteers nationwide, with 45,000kg’s of washing done every year! The team at Orange Sky Laundry won a Social Enterprise award for their work and have recently opened Orange Sky Showers, a free mobile shower van for the homeless.
Internationally we have seen Charity Water bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Across the globe, there are 663 million people who don’t have access to clean water.
The team at Charity Water work with local experts and community leaders to find the best solution for providing water to the region they’re working in, through funding wells, piped systems, or harvesting rainwater.
With less time spent collecting water, kids can spend more time at school. Women are responsible for 72% of water collected in Sub-Saharan Africa, so when a community gets water the women get their lives back. They then go on to launch businesses, improve their homes, and take charge of their futures!
For most passionate entrepreneurs, once they have become successful and have the daily stresses of finance and security handled, often their primary motivation becomes giving back to the community. There are many examples of successful entrepreneurs who now focus their energy and endeavours in charities.
Entrepreneurial Mindset
Being an entrepreneur is a mindset, not a business model. The fastest way to learn about business is to launch a business! So whenever I’m coaching clients on business, I get them to make a mess as fast as possible. Then we learn how somebody reacts in a crisis.
An entrepreneur takes action fast, and they also take responsibility for their actions. It’s their ability to respond and listen to what their business needs. Eight out of ten ideas in business don’t work, so fail fast, fail often, then move on quickly!
It’s not the resources that make an entrepreneur, it’s their resourcefulness. Remember MacGyver? He could make a bomb out of a piece of string and a paperclip and save the day. By doing the work to remove limiting beliefs and past hurts or fears, an entrepreneur creates space to use all their senses to overcome any challenge, turning lemons onto margaritas!
If you’re ready to switch on your entrepreneurial mindset, join us at Entrepreneur Now and learn more about following your passion!
Kindest regards,
Matt Catling
