For the Idea People: Are you an Entrepreneur or an Intrapreneur ?

Would you describe yourself as "highly creative and goal-oriented" ?
Do you "never want to do a boring 9-5 office job" ?

You could be a future Entrepreneur or an Intrapreneur. Read on to find out more.

Entrepreneurship:
This is for those of you who harbor the dream of going into business some day.
A lot of us have the entrepreneurial spirit and the independent mindset that makes us incapable of working for anyone else. If you are in this category and already you know it, then great. If you believe that a job is not the right choice for you, then you should start your business ASAP (as soon as possible.)

A few things I want to say to those of you who want to start something of your own:

1- If you don’t have the confidence to fund your own venture then how can you expect someone else to do so. Make a financially sound business plan with the time it will take to recover the initial investment clearly mapped out. 
2- Try to launch a test version or a different smaller business model that you can put your own money into. Then turn a profit and sell this off to fund your big venture or show your small scale success to attract big investors.
3- It is not about what business you are into or what you are selling. It is not even about whether you can do it or not. It is about how soon you give up. In order to increase your "hanging on" power, start a business when you have adequate risk-absorbing capacity i.e. enough funds to get back on your feet if you fail the first  few times. 
4- It maybe very difficult to hang in there and have everything just the way you wanted it but remember the more you allow other people to invest in your venture, the more your share gets diluted. It is your baby and you should want to be responsible for all of it. Nothing ruins a business like  ‘collective corporate brain’ and ‘future forecasts’.
5- It is a tough road ahead, there are times you will question everything from your business idea to it’s financial viability but remind yourself that success in business depends very little on external factors but a whole lot on internal factors.
6- Stop watching reality TV and stay as far away from ‘realists’ as possible.
7- Your biggest business investment is your brain. This is war so start building bullet-proof armor for your brain – invest not just in business tools but also in friendships, literature, philosophy and poetry.

All the best J

Intrapreneurship:
To those who have a lot of ideas but they know they don't have the mindset of an entrepreneur, the high risk-high reward model of entrepreneurship doesn't excite them but they definitely know they have new ideas about how to make the business better. You are what in today's lingo is called "an Intrapreneur".

An intrapreneur is the person who comes with up strategic ideas to increase business and receives resources from the company to implement them with full freedom. The only catch here is that since the company is trusting you, it must be a solid idea backed by numbers. Since you are your own boss, your actual boss would be more of a guide or a mentor, not with you every step of the way. The company name and reputation will be at stake so if your idea bombs then you bomb with it- the full responsibility is yours.

Intrapreneur: The New Breed of Risk-takers

This is a highly exciting state of work for those
who have genuinely wonderful ideas but little or no backing, finances, team members etc. Successful Intrapreneurs are more valuable to an organisation than regular employees. Mostly they are indispensable to the growth of the company and hence enjoy greater autonomy within the office setup.

So now that you have some idea of the difference between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur, you should start working on your business idea, alone or with a group of trustworthy peers. Go out and be creative.
Do not let the "jobs are boring" syndrome get to you- they are not. The kind of work that is right for you is never going to be boring. You are after all a smart individual who is capable of achieving anything he/she wants - so go ahead and make it happen. :)

What You Don't Want To Do

Do You know -What you don't want from your life ?

Have you ever imagined your perfect life, well if that seems too big a task, have you ever imagined your perfect day ?

I mean this, mainly in terms of work. How would a typical work day look like if you were on the career path of your dreams ? Have you given it serious thought ?

Have you ever wondered what exactly you want or do not want from your life.

I have a couple of questions I want to ask you today, especially to those of who have no clue what they want to do in life.

First begin with what you don't want. That might help weed out a lot of unwanted choices and will ensure that you don't get stuck doing a job you hate ! Yes, ouch that hurts bad. So get started on this list.

All done okay so let's eliminate those career choices based on the fact that they involve doing something so loathsome that you know for sure you don't want to do it. I hope you have based your decisions on proper information from authentic resources  i.e. people working in that field. But most of the time you won't need to talk to people in that field to know something you absolutely hate. E.g. "I am terrified of blood and needles so it was a no-brainer that I didn't want to be a surgeon." - Shruti

List down 3 things YOU DO NOT WANT IN YOUR CAREER.
 E.g. Shruti's List:

- Blood and Needles (No Surgeon/Hospital related work)
- A lot of Boring Paperwork (No Banking/Accounts/Tax related work)
- Too much Physical Activity (No Agriculture/No Sports/No Travelling Jobs)

Okay now you know for sure what you don't want, lets get onto what you do want.

So in order to help you figure out what you really want from life, I have devised a list of questions.
Answer them honestly, take no more than 10 minutes for the entire exercise.

At the end of it all, you will have at least 50% clarity about your career. If you do this exercise sincerely, it can help you chalk out a career plan for yourself. And let's be honest not many people know what they want to be or do in life when they are barely 15 years old but there are many who do manage figure it out very early in life. Let's give it a try:

Assume -  Money is not a constraint and Failure is impossible.

1) Imagine you are living your perfect life. How is your office ? What exactly are you doing ? How are your colleagues ? What kind of a work space is it ? How many hours do you spend commuting to your workplace ? What kind of perks you enjoy in the job ?

2) Imagine you are dead but can still see things on Earth as a ghost. You see your grave and on the stone are written these words... "Here lies........................................................"

What does your tombstone say about you ?
You can also imagine your obituary in the newspaper but that is too predictable hence I prefer this exercise to be done with the hypothetical Tombstone.

3) You have all the money in the world (You are a billionaire or gazillionaire, whatever spells 'all the money' in your dictionary) and you still have to work 8 hours everyday in order to not die of boredom. What would you be doing ? (The money you have in this scenario is not to be used for framing this answer, this money is all saved up for future use, the point is you are working but not merely for sustaining your life.)
What do you see yourself doing ?

 ----------------------------------

When you are done with the exercise, share your answers with a friend or a mentor. This will help you narrow down your career choices and eliminate the bad options for you.
This list will be different for different individuals so if you are doing this with your friends please don't expect all the lists to look the same.
Read my previous post on 'How to Figure out Your Career Path' here -
http://konikasharma.blogspot.in/p/take-career-quiz.html

You can also share your answers with me at <konikasharma1003@gmail.com> if you have trouble interpreting the answers on your own.

- TCM.