Although many people are familiar with the term “entrepreneur,” not many know about entrepreneurship levels. There’s a whole process of becoming a ‘true’ entrepreneur. Those who want more control over their lives are the ones that quickly rise from the ground level of employee status to the ‘real’ entrepreneur phase. Some venture out by starting a lawn service business or establishing a physical store for their products or services.
To help you know which level you’re in and what you need to do to advance to the next one, here are levels or steps to becoming a ‘true’ entrepreneur.
The Self-Employed Stage
The emotional driving force behind every self-employed individual isn’t security but the desire to have more control over their lives, careers, and destiny. This stage is when people want more autonomy in their lives by doing things their own unique way and typically creating situations where they do similar jobs without an employer’s help.
Managerial Phase
Individuals with a managerial status are often in a fantastic position to succeed as an entrepreneur. Managers that became true leaders succeed because they frequently accept the different challenges and responsibilities of ensuring that those under their wing also reach ultimate success and flourish.
By getting the most out of their employees, a manager can delegate aspects of their operations to others and set higher goals. Those individuals who can’t find great employees typically lack what it takes to attract good people — meaning they don’t have what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.
The ‘Business Owner’ Stage
After going through more ‘leadership’ roles, most opt to establish their own business. A ‘business owner’ is a leading entity of an enterprise that can work without working directly in it. It’s the stage where you have built your staff to a place where they do the work for your business, establishing a decent cash flow and capital needed for the next level.
The Entrepreneurial Investor Phase
When you’ve reached success with your businesses, this can be another exciting stage that you can go through — where you’ll need to ‘manage’ money to produce more in return. Investing is a complicated yet lucrative opportunity that anyone can explore. The best ways to invest if you want massive returns to involve smart leveraging of assets. By franchising their original venture or purchasing other booming companies, the entrepreneurial investor can get into the career of selling entire businesses.
In this stage, they ensure the things they’re investing in have valuable equity and have massive potential, then sell them to other existing or aspiring entrepreneurs.
The ‘True’ Entrepreneur
The last phase of your hard work is becoming a ‘true’ entrepreneur, and you can tell if you have become one by seeing if you’ve experienced a paradigm shift involving this four-step process of changed thinking:
- Idealization — You’re able to imagine all-encompassing thoughts for making an ideal world.
- Visualization — You begin to picture that perfect world as a reality and clarify it daily by filling in more details.
- Verbalization — You start placing words to the vision and talk as if it’s already happening.
- Materialization — Because of the previous ways of thinking, you notice things beginning to fall in place naturally — where it eventually becomes a real and tangible fact materializing in the world.
The best entrepreneurs create wealth, but like with everything else, it takes time to get there.
Everyone starts from the bottom and works their way to the top. Determine which level you’re in and make the adjustments needed to go to the next until you reach ultimate success.
