Entrepreneurship: A Life-Long Journey
Posted on February 12, 2022 by Brian Witkowski, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.
Learn how in order to "make it" as a self-empowered entrepreneur with a purpose, you have to be constantly in growth mode!
No single class in entrepreneurship will make you an entrepreneur!
Yes, I just said that!
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take that class or attend that seminar or pursue that other learning opportunity. We all should almost always take advantage of any opportunity we can to learn and grow!
No matter the learning opportunity, we do need to remind ourselves that entrepreneurship or business ownership is not a one-and-done kind of learning experience. Yes, there are subjects where you may only need a class or a periodic update on what to do, like how to write a business plan, social media marketing, or business taxes. Otherwise, no class alone, no degree program even with some entrepreneurship courses thrown in, nor even an entire business degree by itself is going to ever give you everything you need to “make it” entrepreneurially. In order to “make it” as a self-empowered entrepreneur with a purpose, you have to be constantly in growth mode. Because if a business is not growing, it’s likely doing the opposite of growing.
Most of us, however, have been raised to believe “growing up” is a finite journey of sorts. Many of us, myself included, have made decisions rooted in the idea that if we just stay in school and get enough good grades with enough of the right degrees, we will get a lifetime of job security. Many of us have parents, grandparents, teachers, and others in our lives who are or were living proof of this ideal—my grandfather spent his entire career as an engineer for Chrysler—but this is very much an industrial-age ideal that peaked in the 20th century. Nevertheless, society’s seeming desire to keep this ideal alive has led to an increasingly transactional expectation behind our educational experiences, and we’ve now reached a point where most professions have substantially more people with bonafide credentials than there are existing jobs for those bonafide credentials.
The higher education system as we currently know it is nevertheless can still be great at training artists into becoming great performers and creators capable of thriving in this new “real world.” But with fewer and fewer of the traditional jobs around which most artistic degree programs were originally designed last century, an entrepreneurial approach to one’s artistic career will become a more and more of an integral part of success in the current century. There is still more than seven billion people in the world, and each and every one of us is capable of making a meaningful artistic contribution to our own unique portion of that population. We don’t need to compete, we just have to create! Like with our crafts, the entrepreneurial growth is going to be different for everyone. We all have different strengths, weaknesses, curiosities, purposes, and more to which no single class or program alone has all the answers.
Much of the growth we experience as entrepreneurs actually happens in our minds. When we have clarity around our purpose and what it is we want to create and offer the world, the business mechanics start to take care of themselves or we figure out how to get the actual help we need. So rather than worry about every step, we just have to get clarity one step at a time and keep faith that the next step will reveal itself. Hence, the late Steve Jobs was known for saying, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Part of building the trust that allows you to grow as an entrepreneur involves growing your mindset around money and wealth, overcoming limiting beliefs, and constantly improving and getting better with what it is you’re offering the world and how you “sell” it. This is why in addition to continuing to hone your craft with a private teacher or mentor, working with a business coach or even a life coach who can offer a new perspective and offer a fresh set of ideas is just as critical, and it’s why I do the work I do to help my fellow artists, creatives and other entrepreneurs have more of the success—and yes, money!—they dream of.
“Success is a progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”
Success is a journey, not a destination, as the saying goes. The late Earl Nightingale defined it as a “progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” A preeminent entrepreneur throughout his life, Nightingale became known as the “Dean” of personal development. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday earlier this month if he were still alive, and this week will mark 32 years since his passing. Nightingale had an incredible life story; he had an impoverished childhood that included living in a tent city in Long Beach, California during the great depression, and he was one of the few sailors on the USS Arizona to survive the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He then became a renown radio and later a TV broadcaster before his entrepreneurial pathway led him to being a pioneer in the realm of personal development. Check out the recording of his most famous work published in 1956, The Strangest Secret. Much of it is still mostly true today and it can be hard to believe the recording is actually 65 years old! Spoiler alert: in defining the title he said, “We become what we think about, and that’s the strangest secret.”
Nightingale’s definition of success is arguably one of the best, because it keeps possibilities open and infinite. Our society has many of us programmed to only set goals that are finite in nature; we simply want to sing on the biggest stage, perform a certain role, get a certain job, get a degree, get a house, get a car, or some other material possession. Once we achieve said finite goal, we may feel a let down if we don’t know where to go next. Rather than look inward at what we’re most meant to be doing, we try to play it “safe” and do what everyone else is doing so we can, as Nightingale also said, “tiptoe (our) way through life, hoping to make it safely to death.” Life as an entrepreneur is a life of growth, you’re constantly learning, failing, and pivoting to find the next opportunity of success for you and those you serve; and like Nightingale, you have a purpose that keeps you going.
Not sure what that purpose might be for you, or feeling stuck with what you should be doing? Send me a message and let’s talk!
