What does an entrepreneur look like?

If we were to leave it up to social media, Hollywood movies, and the stories we like to tell ourselves and each other, you will find a rather limited representation of how a small business owner should look, act, and conduct their daily lives.

The thing is, it’s all lies.

A successful entrepreneur can take many shapes and forms. When you decide to launch a business, you get to decide what your life is going to look like. You get to determine how you want to leverage your skills, values, and personality. There are no right or wrong ways to be a business owner – the process is just as much a journey about self discovery as it is about creating a business.

So, in case you’re worried you don’t have what it takes to successfully launch your own business, wipe your mind clean of everything you think you’re supposed to be and listen up.

Here are 3 bombshell lies about entrepreneurship you need to throw out right now…

LIE #1 – You need to quit your day job and go all in

You hear of a lot of entrepreneurial journeys where the hero of the story has to “give it all up” at some point and take the plunge into the dark, deep waters of running their business.

They quit their day job, abandon their family, put their health at risk, and dump all their life savings into this one “big score”.

Really?

This kind of rhetoric makes for great Hollywood movies but does it make a whole lot of sense to you? Let’s really think about this, shall we?

Why quit your day job and cut off one of your most important resources – a stable income stream to keep you alive while you pursue your dream business?

It doesn’t make any sense. In fact, it sounds a lot like self-sabotage.

To make matters worse, there seems to be this prevalent belief where if you’re not “all in” and work a day job while you work on a side-hustle, you’re somehow not a real entrepreneur. It’s as if having a day job is demeaning or embarrassing.

When people act like having a day job is dishonourable to some imaginary entrepreneur code, what they really have a problem with is doing the actual hard work and pulling what is essentially a double shift – your day job is your nine-to-five stable income generator, and then you work on building your business in the evenings or early mornings.

There is nothing embarrassing about going this route – we’ve all got bills to pay. This isn’t a cop-out or easy way about launching a new business – in fact, it’s anything but. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not “all in”.

There is no shame in keeping your day job until your side-hustle becomes your main hustle. In fact, it makes financial sense so that your likeliness for success is greater.

If you think you will be overwhelmed by doing both, remember that doing something that you are passionate about on the side will actually give you more untapped energy than you imagined.

LIE #2 – You have to be extroverted

If you were to believe everything you see in media, you would think that all business owners are loud, outgoing, impulsive risk-takers, and people who are fast to take action without thinking too much about anything. They love being surrounded by people, “hustling” and mingling, and being the center of attention. In short, it would seem that you need to be an extrovert if you want to be a successful business owner.

There is no doubt that these personality traits and being extroverted would come in helpful for someone who is looking to start a new business – but, guess what?

There is more than one way to skin a cat (as the saying goes).

That is, just because you’re an introvert (and not an extrovert) does not mean you can’t rock at business ownership.

In fact, introverts have a lot of appealing qualities that make them excellent business owners. They might do things differently, but they can still get positive results.

For instance, while introverts might cringe at the thought of addressing a large crowd, they excel at one-on-one conversations and building deep, long-term relationships. Networking and building long-term, meaningful relationships are the backbone of running a successful company. Introverts do this naturally, one person at a time.

Introverts might be quieter than their extroverted counter-parts, but they are excellent listeners. They are able to get inside the heads of their target audience because they observe and study who they are trying to reach, and are therefore qualified to position their products and services in a way that makes the most sense to their potential clients.

Introverts put a lot of thought into their plans before taking action, which can cut down on taking un-necessary (and often expensive) risks. They are detail-oriented and methodical, which means the nuances of running a business are less likely to evade them.

If you’re an introvert, stay true to yourself and run your business that aligns with your personality.

LIE #3 – Say goodbye to work-life balance

Without a doubt, you’ve heard many horror stories about how your work-life balance will go down the drain if you decide to run a business.

First of all, work-life balance is a bit of a myth in and of itself. What really has to happen is that you need to focus on a few manageable things and prioritize accordingly throughout your calendar.

Even people who work for others struggle to maintain so-called work-life balance.

However, when you work for yourself, you get to call the shots – that means you get to decide how many hours you really want to work.

Furthermore, you get to decide WHEN you work those hours. So, let’s say your idea of work-life balance means you get to spend time with your family and take your kids to softball practice after school. If you were working as an employee for someone else’s company, you might not have that luxury because softball is at 4pm and you get off work at 5pm. However, as a business owner, you get to choose to work after softball, maybe when your kids are asleep and wouldn’t miss you anyway.

Starting a business is a lot of work – that’s no lie. But, running your own business grants you a lot of flexibility that others don’t have.

People who run businesses make time for their families, going to the gym, seeing their friends, and pursuing hobbies.

Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of thinking work-life balance is unimportant.

If anything, maintaining work-life balance will give you more steam to keep up with the demands of being an entrepreneur.

Not having work-life balance is a mark of failure. When you see business owners brag about never having down-time and “always hustling” they are riding on the false notion that this is something good. It’s not. In fact, it’s a recipe for burnout. It’s not a sustainable way to run your business.

You must build in down-time and work-life balance into your routine otherwise it is just a matter of time before you and your business crumble.

Don’t let anyone tell you what a business owner is supposed to look like. You can become any kind of business owner you want to be, on your own terms – you call the shots in your entrepreneurial journey. Do not believe the hype. You do not have to quit your day job, you do not have to be extroverted, and you certainly do not need to sacrifice work-life balance if you want to be a successful business owner.