From Employee to Owner: Making the Mental Shift That Matters

The mental shift from employee to owner is supposed to be an exciting journey. And, it is, just in ways you aren’t expecting. It’s not just a question of acquiring a new skill set and figuring out the financial aspects of your operation. It’s more of an awakening of a different aspect of your personality to think bigger, be bolder, and find satisfaction in ways you didn’t think to look before.

Punching in as an employee ends the day’s work. Becoming an owner makes the work rewarding. It’s a shift that catches most people by surprise, but in a good way.

Safety Equals Freedom (And It’s Exhilarating)

When you’re working for someone else, someone else is concerned about whether the operation is going to be profitable next month. Someone else gets to deal with messy situations. Someone else gets to make the big decisions. Of course, there’s something reassuring about receiving a predictable bi-weekly paycheck. But that also means there’s a ceiling on what you can achieve.

When you become an owner, all the possibilities that come with that role open up to you. Everything from your first decision about hiring your first employee is up to you. For many people contemplating making this shift, learning how to become a business owner presents an enticing prospect of expansion, independence and building what you want on your own terms.

It feels completely different to be an owner than people expect. Sure, everybody knows owners have more responsibility intellectually. But the actual experience of it, repairing problems at midnight because it matters to you, celebrating the wins that you put together with your own blood, sweat and tears, is just incredibly rewarding.

Some people probably were made for this challenge. The independence and control of crafting your own future, building something amazing according to your own values provides a level of satisfaction that paychecks and promotions never give.

You Become an Expert Problem Solver

Employees make decisions in their own little world. Marketers make marketing decisions. Salespeople solve customer problems. Managers manage their people. Everything in a nice little box, and that means opportunities for advancement are nicely boxed up too.

As an owner, nothing is beyond your ability to solve. Where should the operation go from here? How can you come up with better solutions for your customers? What will make you stand out from the competition? This variety keeps the work interesting and pushes you to learn skills that never existed before.

The variety of strategic, tactical, creative and analytical challenges provides a level of development that employees rarely get to experience. By Tuesday afternoon, you’ve achieved more than you did in a month at your previous job.

Most new owners find this variety refreshing rather than overwhelming. They discover talents they never knew they had. The employee who was “good at sales” turns out to be a genius at operations. The strategic thinker with a great gut feeling has been an anal-retentive employee.

You Control the Outcome

Here’s the really empowering aspect of ownership: when good things happen, they are all because of you. That happy customer? You’re the reason. That larger profit margin? You made it happen. That expanding operation? You built it.

As an employee, you can put in as much work as you like and watch someone else get promoted. You can have a great idea and someone in management can completely ignore it. Owners don’t have those headaches.

Every smart move that people make only goes towards their success as an owner. Employees don’t have to deal with satisfying the powers-that-be.

This direct link between what you do and how much energy it gives you is intoxicating. Problems are no longer complaints but challenges to resolve. Opportunities for showing what you can do without having to ask anyone else for permission to implement your ideas.

The independence feels amazing. You can finally implement solutions immediately without asking permission or coming up with outside-the-box ideas to build something genuinely unique.

Your Relationship with Money Gets Interesting

As an employee, there’s no debt of gratitude when it comes to money. You work for someone else and they decide what’s due to you after each period of labor.

As an owner, the opportunities when it comes to money that employment never provides are all yours. Money-making opportunities come in every imaginable shape. The revenue potential has no ceiling. Investment pays dividends. The results add up nicely.

Yes, there’s a considerable amount of complexity involved in operating the finances of an operation compared to getting a regular paycheck as an employee. But the potential adds up multiple times.

When it comes to decisions about how money flows or doesn’t flow into the operation, owners get to decide how the money gets spent on strategies that build the operation over time.

Building something that will be worth something rather than just barely scraping by offers an entirely new lifestyle.

The unanticipated shift from making money to building wealth as an owner has possibilities that employment will never provide.

Success Looks Different

As an employee, success comes in the form of promotions, raises, praise from management and favorable performance evaluations, all defined by someone else.

As an owner, profitability is important and nobody will argue with you about that.

However, many owners measure success by how they made their operation in their own image and by building a great workplace for others.

Creating employment for people, serving customers in ways they want, making an impact in their communities, taking Fridays off because it feels like a good idea and just about any other pursuit people want defines success on their own terms, not someone else’s routine of a subservient employee.

Finding reward in building systems that work for your team and creating strong teams that make an impact on the community feels like something very different from receiving accolades from management.

The satisfaction of customers and growing operation feels delightful when measured against your new understanding of success as an owner.

Making The Mental Shift Work Wonderfully

The shift from employee to owner isn’t a process of becoming someone new; it’s about awakening a person who has been waiting inside of you but had dormant qualities due to the roles of employment that you needed to fulfill.

Most people discover opportunities to awaken these dormant qualities when they learn how to balance a side hustle or freelance operation while still carrying the weight of employment.

Reach out to other owners, mentors, and guides who have taken this exciting leap before you. Their passion for being an owner is infectious, and their support for your growth is a great resource.

By now, it may sound counterintuitive, but embrace the gradual shift as it occurs over time. Nobody shifts from an employee mindset to an owner mindset overnight, but each week offers new possibilities for confidence and ability.

The moments when you have doubts about whether this was a good idea will become fewer than the wins and growth you experience while building something that will last. Owning an operation has one of the most exciting journeys possible, and although people may tell you how exciting it is, it’s likely more exciting than you expect because you get to finally be who you were always meant to be.

That makes every challenge worthwhile.

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