Let’s face it. Being an entrepreneur is made to look more glamorous on social media than it really is. It’s not as easy as posting selfies in front of Ferraris that aren’t yours with the hashtag #hustlemode.
Sad to say most entrepreneurs live the social media life when it comes to growing their own business, yet they lack the ideas, motivation, and patience to grow something bigger than themselves. They try to start their own business thinking that it will take off as the next big thing. Odds are, most will not create the next Amazon, Facebook, or Uber. McDonald’s was an overnight success, 30 years in the making.
Once we’ve become honest with ourselves, we open up to more possibilities. Instead of growing a company from the ground up, why not build an existing business that has structure and foundations in place?
Look at Gary Vaynerchuk. He rose to fame as he grew his dad’s wine business from $4-million to $60-million in sales. He leveraged social media to grow something more than it already was.
He then started getting publicity and people started reaching out to him, which then lead to growing his own digital marketing agency. Doesn’t this sound a lot easier than growing something from scratch?
Don’t get me wrong. It’s possible. But if you’re a beginner entrepreneur with no skills or an intermediate entrepreneur with a few skills, I would start by becoming an Intrapreneur. According to Dictionary.com, an Intrapreneur is the following:
An employee of a large corporation who is given freedom and financial support to create new products, services, systems, etc., and does not have to follow the corporation’s usual routines or protocols.
The point of being an entrepreneur is to not be an employee right? Most will shudder when they see the first two words in the definition, but let’s face it… The bills still need to be paid.
Why not learn a skill set you enjoy that makes you more money while building up an existing business instead of living on ramen and bread as a struggling entrepreneur?
You have to pay your dues and you have to earn it. Once this happens, you’ll be able to work for yourself if you do it right. But it will take time. Now you can’t go and get paid to do things if you don’t know how. Below is a simple three-step process that will help you become an intrapreneur.
First, you need to learn a very specific skill set that businesses need. This can be anything from getting traffic to their site, social media, learning sales copy, email marketing, etc. To find business owners, you can go inside of Facebook groups, attend local meetups, or take some out to lunch if you know them personally. Ask them about what they’re struggling with when it comes to their business.
What you’ll want to do next is find companies that you can help for free while applying this skill set you’ve picked. This can be your current employer or other companies looking for help. Your goal is to apply and learn this skill set until they start seeing results.
While tracking the results, you’ll then want to start tracking the processes you’re doing on a regular basis and create systems to put it in place. If you can say, “We’ve done X to get X results,” then you’re off to a good start.
You can then start doing your own thing later if that’s what you want to do with a proven model in place. Simply get more of the same companies and scale up.
Doing these things from the start will help you achieve the next level. We live in a great day and age where we have more opportunities literally at our fingertips than previous generations have experienced. Why not use them to your advantage? The Internet is full of amazing opportunities that can be leveraged for growth. And if you don’t do it, someone else will. Jump on the opportunities that are presented to you.
Now, you’re going to make mistakes. That’s a given. This should be something that is expected and should only be part of the process.
If you take responsibility and make the companies you work for yours, not only will the companies grow, but you will grow as well.
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