Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Confronting My Inner Employee
Over the years, I don't know how many times I've weighed in on the subject of making the transformation from lifelong employee to entrepreneur.

It's a pet subject of mine because I've had to confront it so frequently.

I frequently hit roadblocks when it comes to setting the course for my business. As much as I hate being confined into carrying out someone else's vision, I find taking my vision and turning it into an action plan to be unfamiliar territory.

Right now, I'm working on a substantive reworking of my main website. In addition to a sleeker, more modern look, I'm reorganizing all the content on the site, pulling some and expanding it into more comprehensive training materials, updating other content, adding more content in areas that have proven most popular, and pruning areas that visitors haven't made much use of.

I'm planning new traffic-generating strategies to test and laying out a more consistent promotion schedule.

Yet, in all this, I find myself ready to defer to others for direction. I describe my options to my mastermind group and they offer opinions. One of them says, "You know what I'd do first? I'd do this and then that and then the other thing."

And I start noting that down as my direction. Wait a minute! She's not my boss! I'm not taking directions from an employer. I'm getting advice from a friend!

But I find myself falling back into employee mode and taking suggestions as directives from the boss. I even find it kicking in when I assess the content on my site. Sometimes I catch myself looking at it as if my task is to figure a way to redeploy articles, each of which MUST remain on the site. But I'm the guy who put it there in the first place!

I have to chuckle at all the ways my "inner employee" tries to divert me from setting and carrying out my own vision -- finding "bosses" to subordinate me to.

How to handle that "inner employee?" Keep moving forward. Laugh at its pitiful attempts. Building a business is a learning experience. Leaving that "inner employee" behind and uncovering the "inner entrepreneur" is only part of the journey.

Jeff

Labels: mindset