Why Employees Should Learn Entrepreneurship

Working for someone else doesn't remove the need to understand how money is made. In a live session, I made that point right after reading out a message from a viewer.

“especially if you're an employee somewhere you need to understand entrepreneurship”

The reason, in the words I used, was so you can do what he had just done.

An employee's revenue goal that changed his pay

The viewer wrote from Germany. He said he had just reached his three-month goal of bringing in more than 50,000 euros in turnover for the company he works with. He said that achieving it earned him a promotion and doubled his salary.

I repeated the details on the recording. The goal was tied to revenue for his company. He reached it, and his pay and position changed. Those are his reported results, and I read them out as he wrote them.

For an employee, entrepreneurship in this sense doesn't have to mean starting a company. It can mean taking responsibility for producing something the business values, and I point to his message as the kind of thing I mean. I make a related case, about looking for entrepreneurial pay incentives inside a job, in the article on earning a raise by asking for more responsibility.

Good advice depends on the details

I also explain why I can't give someone a script from a distance. To advise a person on a raise or promotion, I would want to know about their direct supervisor, the company, and exactly what they are working on. I would want to know whether the supervisor's personality runs one way or another.

There are a few hundred nuances to sort through in a conversation. Once I have a sense of what's really going on behind the scenes, I could probably tell the person exactly what to say to their employer.

The general version of that advice, including staying late, taking on hard projects, and learning the job above yours, is in my answer to another viewer about getting his own team.