Entrepreneurship VS Empire-preneurship

There are TONS of entrepreneurs out there. You may be one of them! There are also a TON of people that have always considered starting a business, but just don’t know what would be a good business to start.

There is a secret to success…

(But like every good story, we will save the best for last.)

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?

I used to. But I recently changed my perspective and my focus. Technically, yes, I am an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur is defined as a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses taking on the financial risk to do so. But I consider myself an empire-preneur. I want to do more than run a business. I want to create a culture; a lifestyle; a revolution of critical thought. I’m trying to build a brand that people go to when they want inspiration or to find happiness and a positive influence, opposed to going to a business simply for products or services.

Some of you might be thinking:

From my experience, however, if you find a way to help people, the cash will follow. The good thing about success is that you define your own success. A lot of people define success by simply helping people. They never make much money, but that’s because their goal isn’t for the accumulation of money; it’s for helping people. In many situations, though, money can make certain things much easier (like paying bills for instance). Some people define success based solely on how much money they accumulate. That’s fine too. It all depends on what works for you. For those of you out there that are on the pursuit for more money: You may have started on your journey with money as the main goal, but if you find a way to help people and then build some basic business principles around the process, the success and cash will follow…and you might just feel good too.

There’s a bunch of ways you could start hustling in little micro-ventures right now for money, but if I were you, I would start with:

…and…

That’s all you’re doing when you provide a product or service. People are paying for your product or service because it helps them solve a problem.

Are you asking why? Why would I build a helpful foundation before just trying to make money?

I guess this point of view is very subjective, but to me, at the end of the day, money is still only paper. If you hold the total opposite perspective, let me reason with you while we’re sharing ideas here. These are my reasons for choosing to help first, collect payment second:

*As a disclaimer, I’m making specific reference to American money, but these ideas can apply to all currency*

First, let’s face the literal facts: Money is paper…I guess if we’re going to get technical, it’s sometimes Silver (well…quarters aren’t really made of silver anymore)…Sometimes nickel…sometimes copper (Nowadays, pennies are only 2.5% copper).

The point is: It’s still just stuff.

Money only gets its value from what the government or markets decide is its value. If your business was gone tomorrow and all your money was gone, you would have nothing and nowhere to start from. Your business’s only focus was the money…and now that money no longer exists… (Or inflation happened and it still exists, except it’s simply less than you used to have even though you physically have the exact same amount!). Unfortunately, your purpose dissipated with the money.

With a foundation for helping people, however, if you lost all your money tomorrow…

…and…

2. you will still have a direction for how to rebuild your business: continuing to help people. 

…and…

I could give you a million tiny ideas with big potential, but it might be better if you reflect on what you really care about and what you enjoy first. Once you figure that out, I can help you brainstorm how you can use that to help people…and then BAM!