The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [111]
Keep in mind, this distinction has nothing to do with whether you’re actually an entrepreneur or an employee. It’s about mind-set . Many employees display the entrepreneurial mind-set (they’re usually the ones who get promoted and promoted again and again), and many entrepreneurs display the employee mind-set (they’re the ones who typically go out of business).
The entrepreneurial mind-set, according to Bryan and Jennifer (who codeveloped this concept), involves six key distinctions. Most people in this book have never heard of either of them, yet nearly everyone in this book—indeed, nearly everyone who creates success for themselves in their careers—intuitively follows these distinctions. It is, perhaps, the DNA of career success.
The Entrepreneurial Mind-set versus the Employee Mind-set (courtesy of Jennifer Russell and self-educated millionaire Bryan Franklin)
If you want to be an entrepreneur, I have found, these distinctions contain the key tools for creating your own entrepreneurial success. If you want to have a kick-ass career in a corporation as an employee, these distinctions contain the key tools for distinguishing yourself from the cubicle herd and getting on the radar of people who make promotions and look for leadership talent in your organization, fast.
One key: rather than looking at this chart to determine “where you fit,” and sitting back with smug satisfaction if you think you already fall on the left side, the person with the true entrepreneurial mind-set is always on the lookout for ways in which the employee mind-set might have grown back into her consciousness. She roots it out again and again as though it is a noxious weed the moment she spots any trace of it.
■ Focusing on Contribution versus Focusing on Entitlement
Focusing your life around contribution means paying great attention to what you can contribute to any given person or situation you care about, banishing all sense of being entitled or “deserving” of one outcome or another entitlement from your mind. It’s the “give, give, give” philosophy espoused by Elliott Bisnow, Eben Pagan, Seth Godin, Russell Simmons, and others in Success Skill #2 about connecting with powerful mentors and influencers.
Bryan says: “Contribution is an acquired taste. If you look in your life right now, I’m sure you’ll find places where you are very solidly in an entitlement mind-set—where you believe that just by sucking in air and then blowing it out again, you deserve to be given benefits and rewards, without any reference to the actual contribution you’ve made and its results.
“Anything you believe you can count on to be there, without regard for what you yourself are doing to ensure it’s there—that’s entitlement. When you lose a job, or a client, do you have the sense that you lost something that you had? (That’s entitlement.) Or, do you immediately think, ‘Wow, I needed to contribute more there. How can I contribute more in the future?’
“I can’t express enough how many people there are with an entitlement mind-set, up and down corporate hierarchies. It’s so rampant. For example, there’s a certain ‘How dare they!’ attitude many employees have after being laid off. That’s entitlement. The employee assumes that because the company hired them, they’re entitled to a job.
“That attitude, that you’re entitled to a job, even a promotion, no matter what results you produce there, is a death sentence for doing the kinds of things that actually lead to your getting promoted and becoming indispensable in the organization; it is itself a leading risk factor in getting laid off.”
■ Focusing on Outcome versus Focusing on Output
The people in this book did not assume that, by going to class five days a week and dutifully doing homework and papers and studying for tests, some wonderful outcome was