Too many people don’t know the difference and if you try to pretend you are one when you are really the other then that is a recipe for disaster. Even worse if you think you are both. Trust me, I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. So, are you an entrepreneur or a freelancer? In order to work in an effective way you need to understand which one you sre.
Neither is better than the other but the approach to business is very different.
Many of us are actually freelancers rather than entrepreneurs. Whilst we do spend time working on the business the majority of our time is spent working in the business. For the most part, I am a freelancer and that restricts my options. No matter how effective my time management You Can’t Manage Time But You Can Use It Better there are still only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. The only way to build a business as a freelancer is to get a better return per hour. This means a combination of better clients who are prepared to pay more and so called “passive income” in the form of things such as courses, books etc. Increasingly those of us who are freelancers need to make our offering remarkable in order to grow. Average or good does not cut it any more. There are a lot of us out there. Hopefully people feel this blog and, as it develops the YouTube videos will be something they will remark on. What do you do that is remarkable?
An entrepreneur on the other hand works on the business rather than in it. This requires the employment of other people and technology. Different skills are required. Some people are freelancers and entrepreneurs, but they are very few and far between. To grow a business as an entrepreneur may still involve getting better customers / clients but it also means developing and growing people and products or services. It means growing the actual business and not just the service or product.
A freelancer needs to grow the quality of their clients / customers whereas most entrepreneurs need to grow quantity as well. If you have employees, then you need to grow them in terms of quality to match the clients / customers.
Decide which you really are and then you can develop your business accordingly. the problem is that too many freelancers think they are entrepreneurs.
Freelancers get paid for their work, entrepreneurs use their own and other people’s money to build a business bigger than themselves. Entrepreneurs build shareholder value.
Entrepreneurs find it much easier to sell their business as it does not rely on them. The problem with being a freelancer is that the business relies on you.
Remember you can’t do everything. If you want to effectively grow a business, you must first decide what sort of business you want to grow.
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