We Were Sold A Dommy By Motivational Speakers

Many years back I was invited to a University to speak to students. I was the poster of what entrepreneurship was. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I love the freedom that comes with it. I was made to believe that entrepreneurs are the new celebrity. All we have to do is start a business and just make the money. The message was that being an entrepreneur is better than being an employee.

As a result, every employee dreams of one day leaving their 9-5 and attaining the freedom of entrepreneurs where people work for them while they enjoy the spoil of the effort of everyone. As such, in many cases, the entrepreneurs don’t earn a salary. He works and works and works. He pays others while he goes with nothing. He makes sacrifices for the business to grow. He gets angry and maltreats his employees.

There was a time I frowned at taking a salary. I felt entrepreneurs only get paid from the profit. From January to December they have to keep grinding and putting in money into the business to make it work. This mindset is the reason why many entrepreneurs are angry. They treat employees as slaves.

The most difficult conversation for employees is talking about money. That is because they started the business to achieve their purpose. However, when they become employees they will get to understand how important money is to build a business. Entrepreneurs work to self actualizes while employees work to earn money. Both are important. The role of the entrepreneur who becomes a leader is to move employees from working for money to working to self-actualize.

The salary is not the bribe your employer pays you to forget your dream. It is a seed for you to take care of yourself to be more productive. It is a milestone you reach that tells you whether you are doing well or not.

Entrepreneurs start a business, while employees build the business. There is no way an entrepreneur can build a business while thinking as an entrepreneur. Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur and remained like that in the early days of Apple. He was fired because a business doesn’t need an entrepreneur when it is being built: it needs employees who are accountable.

During his second coming at Apple, he was able to transition into an employee who was paid $1 a year. He was accountable to people and was responsible for building the company. Bill Gates learned that early on and was able to make the transition and build a great business. Bill Gates was an employee of Microsoft. Mark Zuckerberg is an employee of Meta. Elon Musk is an employee of Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity.

Don’t look down on employees. They are business builders. Treat them well and they will help you build a great business. Most importantly, you should also become an employee yourself. An entrepreneur should be able to become the leader of employees.

Entrepreneurship is a system of capability that makes resources more useful, while leadership is the system of capability that makes people more useful. As an entrepreneur, you are dealing with resources but as a leader, you are dealing with people. When you stay as an entrepreneur and do not transform into an employee, you will treat people as resources.

This I believe is the source of Human Resources. Entrepreneurs who refuse to change into leaders of employees treat the humans who are employees as a resource than can be managed. To them, the entrepreneur is the king while the employees are the slaves, and subjects, who work for the entrepreneur king. Society celebrates the entrepreneur but never the employees who help build the business.

Entrepreneurs who are ashamed to receive salaries as employees from the business they are building will not be able to build the business. How will you know that your business is growing when it doesn’t pay you monthly? When you earn from the business you will do all you can to ensure that the business produces. However, if you have the mind of putting in money to make it work, you will continue to do that.

I worked with an entrepreneur who doesn’t see himself as an employee of his business. He is what we call the general overseer. He doesn’t earn a salary from the company. What they do is that every month after paying the bills, they take the money that remains as their return on investment. Gradually the business started losing its future until one day they close shop.

If you find yourself personally borrowing to pay salary, you may be seeing yourself as an entrepreneur. It means the business is still in its startup phase. When you become an employee, you become free of attachment to the business. You will now lead other employees to build the business. The business will now be the one to borrow to pay salary. You will be an employee. That is why most businesses have a line of credit with their banks.

If you are interested in starting businesses and keep starting them, then remain an entrepreneur. However, if your goal is to grow your business then you need to transition into an employee and become the leader of other employees. When you become one with employees, you will understand how to treat them well. Employees leave companies where they are not treated right. If entrepreneurs become employees, they will want to treat themselves right as such every employee will be treated right.