Empowering and unlocking the entrepreneur within you

In my time working with brokers, I’ve found that many don’t consider themselves entrepreneurs. In a lot of ways, they think of themselves as employees – maybe their own employees, but still employees of a company, rather than owners, founders, or entrepreneurs.

Many have spent a number of years in a large company structure, often in banks or other financial institutions. It’s easy to keep following those patterns of thinking, especially if much of your time was in one role or one company. When the change is made to go your own way, you will likely work in a different office, probably with fewer people around, but with familiar references still in place - you keep your desk the same way, you handle your calls and clients the same way, and you start and finish the day the same way.

None of this is necessarily wrong when starting or running your own broking business – but when I see those brokers who really make a success of things, they choose to approach it with a different set of behaviours and mindsets. Having seen the difference between those who think like an entrepreneur and those who think like an employee, I have identified how to make the most of new talents, an approach you can tap into for the first time to drive faster success.

The path of the entrepreneur

What makes an entrepreneur stand apart from an employee? It’s all about how you invest in yourself and your business.

Here’s a wonderful article in the Harvard Business Review that describes the difference between entrepreneurs and employees, and being one or the other. Albeit with an American slant and a technology focus, I love the points writer Scott Kirsner makes about these differences: bureaucracy, upside, persistence, fear of failure, and being a private company versus a public one.

Here’s my take, based on my own experiences and observations.

If you own your broking business, you are an entrepreneur, even if you don’t feel like claiming that title. There is an entire suite of skills within entrepreneurship that you can take advantage of when you chart your own course in business. You’ve already taken the first step, out of one door and through another door: fully make the jump, shake off your old mindset, and give your business the opportunity to go to the next level.

True entrepreneurial spirit is hidden in your day-to-day life, from how you imagine your success, the size of the addressable market that you see, the way you prioritise the activities that will drive your business growth. Every time you make a simple to-do list, you look into your own future to envisage a moment in which you have achieved more than you have right now. That’s one of the best ways you can start to unlock the entrepreneurial spirit in you.

Lessons to unlock the entrepreneurial spirit

Entrepreneurs are smart. They’re driven to succeed. They’re excellent learners – mostly because they have to be. When you run your own business, you come up against new problems to solve almost every day. And yet there are so many ways to learn from those who have met all kinds of challenges head-on, and overcome them. Choosing to be on a path of infinite learning can help push your creativity and confidence when facing a challenge. For every challenge you face and meet, you gain the benefits of experience and wisdom.

As an entrepreneur, you can’t expect people to solve your problems for you. You’re your own best friend, your own HR department, your own supervisor. You have to do it yourself, and no matter what problem needs solving, it is best to look to solve them fast even if you have other, competing priorities. You need to deal with ambiguity, like the fact that your salary is more of a nebulous idea than a regular transaction! 

My approach with any challenge is to critically review the issue, use the available information at hand (either my own or through my network), resolve and then execute. But always measure the execution and be prepared to pivot if the outcome is not as expected.

But you learn, you solve, you improve, and you start to lock in a baseline revenue whilst you keep building on top of it. You can network with others who can help, you can ask for feedback and you can learn from the times you fail and the times you knock it out of the park.

Once you’ve done something once, it’s less time or energy consuming to do it next time. You make progress.

The most important thing to realise is that the future hasn’t happened yet – the to-do list is never finished. But you can take responsibility for giving the best chance to the future and to prioritise the best way to get there. There is something very empowering when you own your own business, that you are the one in charge of your future, and what it looks like.

Keep challenging and stretching yourself

What I love most about the entrepreneurial world is the constant education. I personally love challenging myself to learn new things, and to try new experiences. I have long learned that a curious mind is the key to growth, to innovation, and to personal and professional success. I love that saying, “a mind once stretched can’t go back to its original size”.

As Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus says: “All human beings are born entrepreneurs. Some get a chance to unleash that capacity. Some never got the chance, never knew that he or she has that capacity." Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance with Grameen Bank; he knows a lot about the entrepreneurial spirit.

Every broker has a lot of hidden potential energy in themselves and their business. Believe in it, see yourself as an entrepreneur, unlock it, and use it to realise the full potential of your business – and yourself!

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