What's it like to be an entrepreneur?
If you take 15 minutes to decide on your order at Panera and you’ve been struggling with starting a side hustle for—oh—years, those kickass women starting businesses, attracting seed capital, and writing books just for kicks probably seem like they come from another species.
But you don’t need to ditch office life to be an entrepreneur. It’s not a title, it’s a mindset. An entrepreneurial mindset is about innovation—it's experimenting with new ideas, thinking, and approaches to solve problems. You don’t need VCs for that.
Take it from Melika Jahangirl. Raised in a family of entrepreneurs, Melika has applied an entrepreneurial mindset to a sales career that’s taken her from finance and real estate to her current role at transit startup Chariot, where she pitches and negotiates some of the company’s most valuable, high-level relationships. Although she’s not working for herself, Melika’s high-stakes role requires the same skills that entrepreneurs use every day.
“There’s such a stigma that you can only be an entrepreneur if you have cofounder behind your name,” Melika says. “That’s so not true. There’s a lot of stuff that I get to do every day that makes me feel very entrepreneurial. Sometimes I feel like I’m on an island. Like, I’m doing a lot of high-level stuff. But they trust me enough to do it.”
Basically, it’s proactively taking control of your own career trajectory. Because sure, someone else might be assigning your projects and reviewing your work, but when it comes to feeling challenged fulfilled in your career? You only report to yourself.
So here are some of Melika’s tips for cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset and implementing it in your own 9-to-5.
How To Implement An Entrepreneurial Mindset In Your Career
Even if you’re not the CEO of your own company, you’re the CEO of your own career. And while informal mentors and career counselors can identify your strengths and expose you to new opportunities, you’re the only expert on your life.
No need to break out a vision board or anything, but goal worksheets are key. We custom made some in fact, which you can download here:
But to Melika, an entrepreneurial mindset means moving beyond your company’s prescribed targets and setting sky-high goals for yourself.
“Every year you have goals that are set for you within the company, numbers that they expect you to reach,” Melika says. “But for me, I don’t care about those goals. My goals are higher and better and bigger.
For myself. And that’s the entrepreneurial mindset. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get to this number and then I’m going to coast.’
The mindset is always wanting to push yourself to be better and bigger—and to do more than you thought you could.”
1. Stick to Your Strengths
When every employer wants three years’ experience for an entry-level job, and wants a mile-long list of “preferred qualifications”, it’s tempting to try to do everything for the sake of marketability. “Sure, I can code. I can design. I can speak Spanish and do Instagram, Right?”
Not that you shouldn’t stretch yourself. But every second you spend sweating over the code you’ll never understand steals time from your core skills—the ones that’ll separate you from the crowd (and pay the bills). So whenever you’re picking up new skills, consider the opportunity cost involved. Don’t sacrifice your most valuable strengths to challenge yourself. Jack of all trades, master of none and all that.
“Figure out what your skillset is and become an expert at it. There’s a lot of things that we’re passionate about or interested in, but I know my limitations,” Melika says. “Yes, I love clothes and shoes... but I’m not a creative person. I can’t sit there and build shoes and dresses.
What I am good at is building relationships [and] selling things, I’m good at creating relationships, building businesses, coming in, and developing people.”
Once you’ve developed that expertise, you’ll be able to complete your work and attract new business with less effort. From there, it’s a self-fulfilling cycle of success, attracting new projects, and more success. Sign us up.
“People will come to you because you’re an expert,” Melika says. “It’ll come more naturally to you, it’ll be more enjoyable, and...easier. You don’t want to work harder if you don’t have to.
“There’s been tons of times when I’ve run circles around other people because they’ve tried to be the master of everything and then, they’re the master of none,” Melika says. “If you say you can do all these things and you do them half-assed, it’s unwarranted.”
2. But Play Them In Fresh, Innovative Ways
What if you’re a born math whiz who, like, hates the idea of banking? No sweat, your natural strengths won’t doom you to one job title for your whole life. Quite the opposite, actually. Once you expand your options beyond one job title or industry, you’ll find lots of ways to leverage the same thing. Say you’re an awesome writer with a passion for empathy and empowering women. Maybe you report on sexism in Silicon Valley. Or you could work in marketing for a nonprofit that empowers women. Or you write and edit resumes as part of a career counseling gig.
Sure, you’re born with certain abilities. But from there, you can choose your own adventure. Having an entrepreneurial mindset means exploring and remaining open to all those opportunities.
So keep your eyes open for new and innovative ways to flex that skill set—whether it’s pursuing new clients for your company or totally changing careers. How? Whenever you’re faced with a problem or fired up by a social issue in the news, ask how your skills could make a difference. If the same problem keeps popping up in the office, see what you can do to solve it. Talk to friends and mentors about their work—you never know what partnerships or ideas can arise over happy hour.
Beyond the important things—like making you more marketable and positioning you for promotions—it just spices things up. Who can say no to that?
3. Take Educated Risks
Whether you’re launching a company, going back to school, or asking for a raise, sometimes you need to make the decision that could either boost your career or blow apart your bank account.
So when do you listen to your instinct? According to research from Boston College, your gut instinct results in a good decision—but only if you’re already an expert on the topic at hand. When you can back up your ask with hard data and proven results, you can bet on yourself and more often than not, it’ll pay off.
Personal example: After getting a master’s in journalism, I recently turned down a journalism job I’d have traded a limb for last year. Terrifying. But after doing more than 20 informational interviews with reporters and magazine editors, and researching other career options, I could listen to my instinct when it screamed “no,”, knowing that it came from a well-informed place.
Entrepreneurship is about bold risks, not blind ones. It’s not just about flashy ideas, but gaining the information you need to follow through on them. So stay current with trends in your industry, market, or product. Asking for a raise? Arm yourself with salary data from peer companies. And if you’re considering a career change, connect with mentors, recruiters, or friends for some insider info.
4. Self-promote, Self-promote, Self-promote
For entrepreneurs, self-promotion isn’t bragging. It’s just how they pay the bills. And no matter who you work for, you’re leaving money and opportunity on the table if you aren’t attracting business and stretch projects. To get there, you gotta communicate that hey, I contribute, I create value, and I kick ass, so work with me.
So sell your skillset like it’s a sexy multi-million dollar startup. This takes a lot of different forms, depending on your industry. Maybe it’s leveling up your online brand and posting thought leadership on LinkedIn and Twitter. Maybe it’s gunning for a challenging international project. Or maybe it’s just a well-placed comment taking credit for the presentation you owned.
Easier said than done, though, especially when many of us feel like we’re faking our way through work. Broadcasting it publicly? Please.
As a saleswoman working on a commission, Melika’s livelihood depends on her ability to position herself as the authority on her product. For women seeking to self-promote, she recommends “constructive delusion,” i.e., pumping yourself up with the biggest of dreams, even if they seem unrealistic to the outside world.
It’s as simple as sitting down in the break room, closing your eyes, and telling yourself that you could be CEO one day. Or for a more formal approach, use a guided visualization exercise to see your future self occupying that corner office, or sealing that mega-deal, or whatever wild dreams you’ve got.
Delude yourself. After all, nothing happens without first a dream.
5. But Always Solicit Feedback
Of course, without a healthy dose of humble pie, constructive delusion turns into...real delusion. So, counterbalance that self-confidence by soliciting critiques from your colleagues.
Melika credits her own growth to the constant ‘constructive feedback’ she received from classmates at Cornell Business School.
“Pleases tell me if there’s something I could be doing differently or if I’m missing something. Because that’s the only way we can improve,” she says.
“You just learn to become a better version of yourself over and over again. Then you start to appreciate it because you have these reviews that come up later and you see the changes you’ve made.”
6. Collaborate and Connect
We associate entrepreneurship with autonomy—leaving the drama of the office and striking out on your own. If anyone had enough smarts and skills to sustain their own career without any outside help, though, they wouldn’t need a job in the first place. No person is an island, whether you’re a one-person shop or part of a 10,000-person conglomerate.
So in a paradox, the entrepreneurial mindset requires both collaboration and autonomy. As you pursue your self-driven goals, seek out mentors for pointers, feedback, or just some understanding from someone who’s been there, done that.
Any path worth taking will test you, whether emotionally, financially, or professionally, so it’s worth enlisting some moral support—a work wife, a superior, a mentor from outside the office—for those hard times.
To truly benefit, you’ve got to pay it forward, too, Melika says. As any anyone, entrepreneur or corporate type, will tell you, you live and die by the value you provide to others. So there’s a business—and moral—case for supporting other women.
Some great places to start? Starting a career support circle with the other women in your office, forming a women’s professional development network at your company (if you don’t have one), or just keeping an eye out for the most important people in your life.
Feature image courtesy of Chanèle McFarlane.
