Okay, so you hear a lot about entrepreneurship.
And now you're hearing about
intrapreneurship as well.
You want to know what that means, what the difference is, and why you should maybe consider
becoming one of the other.
Stay tuned, because that's exactly what I'm covering in today's video.
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Okay, so you're here to figure out what the differences between an intrapreneur and an
entrepreneur.
And maybe you're here, just for informational purposes, maybe you're here because you are
trying to figure out which one you should be.
Or maybe you're here because you're trying to figure out which one best aligns with your
professional goals and what you want to accomplish in your professional life.
Now, there's a few key differences between being an intrapreneur and an entrepreneur
that I will love to highlight to get the conversation started.
So let's start off with figuring out what the differences are.
Well, the highest level difference, and the key difference, is that an intrapreneur is
someone who is innovating within a company, whereas an entrepreneur is someone who is
innovating at their own company.
So they are maybe solo, maybe they have their own company, an intrapreneur is working for
someone else.
Now,
with that, the intrapreneur actually has less risk.
They probably don't have as much skin in the game, they're probably not investing their
own money.
If something doesn't work out, if they're especially if they're part of a big company,
it's probably not going to have a huge impact, maybe it's not going to help them get promoted
as quickly as they want, but there's not going to be any major drawback if the initiative
isn't successful or isn't successful at all.
Whereas an entrepreneur has placed all of their eggs into one basket, there is only
one option for the entrepreneur, and that is success.
Now on the other hand, if the initiative is wildly successful, the intrapreneur doesn't
actually stand a lot to gain, all of the benefits of the entrepreneurial initiative is going
to go to leadership, to shareholders, to the company executives, they're probably not going
to see a large piece of that pie unless they have like stock and it's like super huge,
in which case their benefit from it is going to be fractional.
Maybe they get a really nice bonus, but that's not something that you're going to count on
as an intrapreneur.
Whereas the entrepreneur, if their initiative is wildly successful, they can make millions
and millions or maybe billions or trillions of dollars (if you're someone like Jeff Bezos
or Mark Zuckerberg), so while the intrapreneur has less risk on the outset, they have less
to gain whereas the entrepreneur has all of the risk but there is a huge upside to their
success.
Now it's helped them in their journey the intrapreneur probably has a lot of resources
available to them.
So there's different teams within their company who may be supporting them.
For example, when I was an intrapreneur at another company, I was creating a new service.
But I still had the advantage of having a marketing team behind me.
I still had the advantage of leadership, who was sounding board and gave me advice and
counsel whenever I solicited.
I had a sales team who did eventually sell my service.
I had a partner network as well, who also helped to deliver and to sell for me.
An entrepreneur is not going to have all of those resources available - or at least they're
not going to unless they're paying for them.
If they are pre-revenue, they're going to be paying out of their own pocket or under
their investment round in order to actually acquire the resources that they need.
So if I, as an entrepreneur decided that I need to invest in marketing, I have to go
and hire a marketing consultant, or hire a marketing person on full time.
Whereas as an intrapreneur, I would just contact my marketing partner.
Now there's one other difference that I actually don't see often included in a video like this,
or on the internet in like a blog post or anything.
And then it's actually your career development and professional development.
This is actually very different if you're an intrapreneur versus if you're an entrepreneur.
So if you're an intrapreneur, you probably have some resources available to your company,
you probably have a manager, maybe they even have a manager - maybe you even meet with
that manager on a regular basis - you likely have some sort of training team, maybe you
even have a budget allowance in order to invest in education, coaching, training, conferences,
all of those things.
Whereas if you're an entrepreneur, you have to find a way to actually get those professional
development resources for yourself.
So you're going to be investing in business coaching.
You're going to be investing in conferences out of your own pocket.
If you decide that you need to go take some coursework or certifications, that is all
going to be something that you sell fund for someone else funding for you.
Now, I know that there's a lot of people that are starting out in their career, and they're
trying to make a decision in terms of which they should be should they go work at a company
and maybe be an entrepreneur, or should they go and be an entrepreneur or a solopreneur.This
could be freelancing, or it can be actually starting their own company, I want to speak
to this point from a solopreneur perspective as well, because this is really important.
And this is something that I realized very early in my career that absolutely shaped
my decision on when I would be an intrapreneur versus when I would make that shift to an
entrepreneur.
Intrapreneurs have high potential for growth of their company, they're creating high impact,
they're creating new revenue, they're saving money, they're going to get notice they're
going to be leading from wherever they are, and they are creating a high career trajectory
for themselves.
Whereas if you're a solopreneur, you're a contractor or you're a freelancer, you're
probably not going to be given a lot of stretch assignments.
You might not be given a high level of creativity in your work.
So that's the downside of solopreneurship, especially if you do it too early on.
Because if you are someone who wants to grow professionally, you want to get to the next
level, you still maybe don't want to climb the corporate ladder but there's some sort
of ladder you want to be on.
It's actually much more challenging to find that as a solopreneur.
Now I actually bring this up because it was very early in my career that I was working
for a recruitment agency.
And we were specifically selling consulting services that this came to realization.
I always was an entrepreneur, ever since the first day of my career, I counted myself as
an entrepreneur.
However, it was in that position that I realized that my path to entrepreneurship was not going
to be direct, I wanted to be an intrapreneur as long as possible to take risk, to get experience
to break my teeth to grow as a leader and to learn how to manage people how to grow
businesses.
And I wanted to learn all about the different areas of business while I was still working
for someone else, the safety of a paycheck.
And that is something that the entrepreneur and solopreneur do not have.
There is no guaranteed income when you're working for yourself or by yourself.
Whereas obviously, if you're intrapreneur or you have a base salary, maybe you have
a bonus structure, maybe you have stock options.
Now, ROI longterm as an intrapreneur, probably not going to be as good for versus your entrepreneur
or solopreneur.
But that is going to be the trade off.
There's always going to be a risk versus reward.
Now, if you are someone who is trying to figure out what you want to do, there are three questions
that I would really encourage you to ask yourself.
First of all, what do you actually want out of your professional life?
Do you just want to go do your job?
And that's it?
Do you want to have safety in terms of a paycheck?
Do you want to have additional support?
Do you want to actually take less risk in your career?
Which leads me to the second question is, how risk averse are you?
Are you someone who has substantial amounts of student debt that you need to make sure
are paid off?
Maybe you dream of buying a home before you go and create your own company.
Or maybe you're someone who has a lot of financial freedom, or you're just very comfortable working
with a lot of financial risk, that you're willing to go out on your own, and you're
going to make it work because when you need to make it work is going to be the time that
you do.
And the third question that I ask every professional that I speak to that is trying to make a decision
is: how do you want to get to the C suite.
I've said this before, the easiest job to actually get is CEO.
It's simple.
Just go create a company, call yourself a CEO.
Et voila, you're a CEO.
Now, if you're someone who sees that there is more to it than that, if you want to be
in the C suite, but you want to have earned that seat, you want to be seasoned, you want
to be knowledgeable, you want to be an admired, appreciated, respected and known leader, you
might want to take the path of intrapreneurship.
And that's because it is going to be through your experience evolving within a corporate
setting that you're going to have a safety net access to mentors and access to sponsors,
who are going to help you develop into that C suite leader that you want to be.
It's going to take you longer, but it's within your reach.
Now, if you don't care about that, and you just know that you can feel your way to success,
then entrepreneurship is maybe a great path for you to consider.
For me personally, I ended up choosing a hybrid.
I actually worked until I got to an executive leadership position.
And then I realized that it was a point in my career that I was ready to work for myself,
that it was no longer a fit for me to work in corporate America, because it wasn't serving
my actual mission to help ambitious professionals achieve the professional success that they
deserve in life.
And that's when I decided to flip the switch and become an entrepreneur.
So I'd love to know.
Are you trying to make the decision right now to are you winning anyone way?
Let me know what questions you have and what you're doing down in the comments below.
I hope you found this video helpful if you did.
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Thank you so much for watching.
I really hope that you enjoyed today's video,
and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye for now.