Do you know the difference between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur, and more importantly, do you understand the impact that it has to increase or decrease your money flow? In today’s blog post, we’re going to look at the difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.
So how does understanding the distinction between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship impact my money flow? Understanding this difference will put you in a particular mindset depending on your circumstance. I was thinking about how to best explain this and it made me think about my own life, particularly when I was waffling between entrepreneurship and working in the corporate world.
So an intrapreneur is basically an entrepreneur working in a corporate environment. This is important to understand because when you’re already working in a corporate environment, you may or may not necessarily own that corporation. In fact, intrapreneurs do NOT own the company as they are literally entrepreneurs working in a corporate environment. When I was waffling between entrepreneurship and working in a corporate environment, I was constantly telling myself that I wasn’t cut out to be working in the corporate world. It wasn’t like I was doing poorly; I was actually doing well every time I worked in a corporate environment and I went up the ranks really quickly, but I would get to a point where I would end up butting heads with leadership or get bored and then go off and do my own thing again. When I finally found my path, I realized “THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO. THIS IS MY PURPOSE.” So entrepreneurship ended up just being a better fit for me.
Let me say that there’s nothing wrong or better between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. The importance is to understand the distinction so that you can make sure that you are approaching your journey, your career, and your work in the right way to optimize your money flow and minimize anxiety, stress, and worries around money. First let’s define the individual terms.
Entrepreneurs basically solve problems for the world and their audience, and get paid to do so. They are problem solvers of the world that get compensated monetarily for fixing these problems.
Intrapreneurs essentially do the same thing, but with a few more layers. Intrapreneurs not only help the company that they’re working with, but they also help them solve the problems for their audience. True intrapreneurs are able to maximize their money flow and their success, and they can also solve the problems within the context of the organization.
When I was working in the corporate world, I was able to advance my career very quickly because I approached my position in twofold.
First, I approached it as if I was the owner of the company.
If I was the owner of the company and was hiring me, how would I like myself to be? How would I conduct myself in that environment? How would I like myself to behave or produce in my own company? An intrapreneur basically approaches their role in the company as if it was their own. Whether or not they even own it, there is a vested interest in their own personal success, regardless of what they’re being paid.
Second, an intrapreneur is someone that works in a corporate environment with an entrepreneur mindset.
As a reminder, an intrapreneur is an entrepreneur that happens to be working in a corporate environment. What that does is it creates a sense of commitment to success regardless of the environment or the comp plan or whatever the case may be. That affords the intrapreneur an opportunity to move up the ranks really quickly.
Why is this important? How are intrapreneurs able to do that and entrepreneurs tend to struggle? Here’s the thing: entrepreneurs are responsible for more than just going out and selling their product or service. Entrepreneurs also have to keep in mind all other aspects of what it means to own and run a business, including the administration, the operations, the logistics, the accounting, you name it. The nice thing about an intrapreneur is that you can still have an entrepreneurial mindset, but you can be hyper focused on your role as an entrepreneur within the organization without having to work and worrying about overhead, hiring and firing employees, handling insurance and comp plans, and all those other things that an entrepreneur has to worry about. And that’s why an intrapreneur not only has to think about solving problems for the audience of the organization, but also to solve the problems within the organization. So it’s important to understand this distinction because it gives you the ability to really set the mindset on how to maximize and optimize your productivity and your role within the organization.
Entrepreneurs focus on solving the problems for their audience. Intrapreneurs do the same, but they also solve problems within the organization to optimize their career path. In both scenarios, the most successful entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs focus beyond just self and what they’re there to do. Now this is where the role of bad money stories start to have an impact on the success journeys of an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur because the focus to be successful in either forum is to think beyond self. It’s not a me conversation, but rather a we and them conversation. What that means is you need to get rid of the blocks that are having you focused on self. What happens is when money anxiety rears its ugly head in the form of stress and worry, it fogs up the focus outside of self and puts you in absolute survival mode. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, if you’re burdened by bad money stories, you cannot solve the problems effectively. You’ll be constantly thinking about how to survive, when’s my next paycheck, when’s my next raise. And then what happens is you shift away from intrapreneurship and become an employee. You shift away from entrepreneurship and being a slave to your own business.
The key thing is to make clear which side you on: are you an entrepreneur or are you an intrapreneur? Then you want to shift your mindset for that approach to make sure that your money flow isn’t impacted as you are solving the problems within an organization or for your audience. You want to make sure that your bad money stories aren’t being triggered and get in the way so that all you’re thinking of is yourself and how you need to make money. If you don’t have any bad money stories in the way, those definitions of entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship start to really integrate into your unconscious understanding so that you can maximize and optimize your career path in either direction, whether it be as an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur.
Watch the video about being an entrepreneur versus an intrapreneur below:
Of course, if you want to dive deeper on this concept, we do have communities that are free that you can join. If you’re on Facebook, then join me here. We have a group called the Money Lab, which is also free. If you don’t agree with how I define entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship, give me some feedback on the comments below.
So that’s the difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship based on not only my experience, but what I’ve been able to do over the last couple of decades in helping both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. In the context of those definitions, you’d be surprised how very few people realize that in order for them to be super successful, it’s about embracing and having that entrepreneurship mindset within the context of a corporate environment, which then makes you an entrepreneur. If you found it helpful, then give me a light or leave me a comment below. If you didn’t find it helpful, you can still leave a comment too. Either way, looking forward to sharing more concepts and ideas about how to increase your money flow either as an entrepreneur and intrapreneur or just a human being in the next video.
