There are many benefits to being employed. So why would you even consider thinking like an entrepreneur? Particularly if you have no plans to start a business of your own and work for yourself?

As an employee, you are guaranteed an income. You might even get a pension contribution (rare in yachting, but common in shore jobs) and free health cover as part of your compensation package. Entrepreneurs don’t always have that financial security.

Also, your obligations to your employer are clearly defined and your job responsibilities are limited.

Entrepreneurs have to cover many, many bases in their business. You, on the other hand, have a fixed role and you don’t stray beyond that. Even on board a superyacht, where you will be often asked to turn your hand to many things, there are limits.

If you’re a chef, no sensible yacht owner is going to ask you to do the chief engineer’s job.

The downsides to being an employee: you are blind

On the one hand, that limited scope is good. You have clarity and you have boundaries in your work.

On the other hand, it can hide the bigger picture. You don’t really know everything that goes into running a superyacht smoothly. So you take things for granted.

Things happen without any action by you, so you don’t give much thought to who and what makes those things happen.

At worst, this makes you complacent, submissive and passive. You get into the mindset that as long as you do your job, everything will work out OK. You take orders, do the work and your salary appears in your bank account at the end of every month.

Basically, you’re relying on others to keep the boat operating and to find the money to pay you. That disconnect not only creates complacency, it also fuels contempt.

You probably hear a crew mate complaining about the boat, or the owner or a senior crew member, nearly every day. And they do so with little consideration of whether the complaint is justified. In other words, there is a big separation between an employee and the wider business as a whole — and its goals, motivations and values.

That’s only natural. When you trade your time for money, you’re not reaping the wider benefits of your contribution. You aren’t getting shares, for instance. You have no sense of ownership, because you don’t own any part of the business, or in your case, the boat.

The trap you can fall into is that you get stuck in the employee mindset. You become complacent in being dependent on someone else to keep the financial engine that pays you running.

In return, you let someone else give you orders and decide how you spend your time.

Most fatal of all: limit yourself to a narrow set of job parameters. You’ll do what’s required, but nothing more.

Why would you? Your extra output is seldom rewarded in any meaningful way. All of this stifles you as a person.

One way to avoid this is to think like an entrepreneur.

The entrepreneur mindset forces personal growth

Entrepreneurs are always pushing themselves. They live almost constantly either on the very edge of their comfort zone or, more usually, outside of it. They can’t get comfortable, because the moment they do, they lose momentum.

Entrepreneurs have a goal they want to achieve, one that is deeply meaningful to them. So they are constantly moving towards that goal. Every action they take is aligned with that goal and their life is in service of achieving it.

They won’t achieve their goal if they stay within their comfort zone and rely on the skills and contacts they already have. True growth, especially personal growth, happens outside of your comfort zone. Because an entrepreneur has to live in that zone almost daily, they have no choice but to grow as people. It comes with the territory.

Entrepreneurs have a vested interest

What kind of person wants to spend their life outside their comfort zone. That’s a tough place to be, after all.

Frankly, most entrepreneurs don’t want to leave their comfort zone, either. But, just like many other people, they know that if they want to grow and make progress, they will have to leave it.

But knowing you need to do so is different from actually doing it. This is where entrepreneurs have an unfair advantage in their day job compared with most people.

Entrepreneurs benefit directly from what they are building. They own the business, so anything that benefits the business ultimately benefits them. So if they move outside their comfort zone for work, they get the reward.

You don’t.

But that’s not to say you shouldn’t.

The worst thing that could happen if you push yourself professionally and take on tasks outside your job spec is that you don’t get any extra reward from your employer. But you will gain valuable experience.

That’s your ‘vested interest’. That’s your reason for doing it. You have a vested interest in yourself. That goes for anything you do outside of work as well. You have comfort zones in every aspect of your life.

Sometimes the vested interest in stepping out of a comfort zone is obvious, e.g. drinking less alcohol or eating healthier. It can still be hard to do, but nobody is going to argue that taking better care of themselves is bad for them.

The ‘entrepreneur tip’ here is: find the vested interest (i.e. the reason) that will encourage you out of your comfort zone.

Entrepreneurs see the bigger picture

Inevitably, when you spend more time out of your comfort zone, you’ll get a better appreciation of your place in the greater scheme of things. You’ll see more connections between your actions and the broader world around you.

This increased understanding can give you a stronger incentive to perform better at your job, knowing that doing so is contributing to improving something further down the line that had been hidden from you until now.

Even more powerful is that you will see opportunities for yourself that you hadn’t seen before, because they were hidden by the boundaries of your comfort zone.

Since you hadn’t seen them before, you didn’t know you were missing out. But out in the ‘discomfort zone’, your eyes are opened to exciting possibilities.

It’s here, for instance, that entrepreneurs find the solutions to the challenges that stand between them and their ultimate goal. Those solutions often come in the shape of people who they didn’t even know existed.

Entrepreneurs are team builders

No successful entrepreneur builds a business on their own. They simply don’t have the ability or capability to do so. So good entrepreneurs seek the help of others and build a team around them. Great entrepreneurs fill their businesses with people who are smarter than they are.

There is a saying: ‘If you are the smartest person in the room you’re in the wrong room.’

In other words, if you want to grow, both in terms of your personal growth as well as your success, you need to surround yourself with people who know more and are more experienced than you.

But those people don’t live in your comfort zone. The people who live in your comfort zone are the same kind of people as you.

With the exception of one group. That’s the group of people for whom your comfort zone is their ‘discomfort zone’.

In other words, they have stepped up to your comfort zone. Some of them won’t last and will return to their own comfort zone.

Others, the ones you need to keep an eye on, will get comfortable and then move on and up again, in search of more discomfort and growth — on their way to who knows where and what level of meaningful success?

Entrepreneurs appreciate how things are connected

When you start meeting people who know more and have seen more than you, your own horizons start to expand. You are able to look further and deeper, allowing you to see and make connections you didn’t see before. With that understanding comes power.

Understanding something doesn’t necessarily give you the power to change it or influence it. But it does give you the power to come up with better plans, strategies and actions for yourself.

Not only will this benefit you in the current stage of your life. It will help you move more quickly and smoothly into the next phase, be that in yachting or outside of it. Being able to join up the dots is like having a cheat code to map out your life.

For example, you might want to write a murder mystery novel set on board a superyacht and have it published by a reputable international publishing company. But what exactly are the steps you need to take?

Hint: long gone are the days when you simply sent your manuscript to a publisher and waited for them to send you a royalty cheque back by return of post. Knowing how the world of book publishing works today is vital. Finding out and then taking action will involve stepping outside of your current knowledge bubble.

Entrepreneurs are in control of their own life

The ability of entrepreneurs to take action is something you have too. Not in all aspects of your life, perhaps. After all, you still have to fulfil your daily duties on board the yacht and your time isn’t your own.

Nevertheless, you do have the ability to take small decisions and actions that will affect the course of your life. But you have to choose to do so. Entrepreneurs choose to make decisions and take actions. They take command of the controls that are available to them.

One of the mantras we live by at Yachting Financial Solutions is, ‘It’s always your next move.’ Doing so, makes us do something, either in the business or in our lives outside work. If we want something to happen, we know that the best way to make it happen is to set the wheels in motion ourselves.

Entrepreneurs have the same mentality. Instead of merely riding the currents to where they may take them, they hoist a sail and set their own course. Instead of spending their valuable time on Earth making the dreams of others come true, they spend it making their own dreams come true.

That’s not a bad trait to have, is it?

Entrepreneurs are in control of their FINANCIAL life

When we think of entrepreneurs, we usually think of billionaires. But we all know that not all entrepreneurs are billionaires. Most aren’t even millionaires. A lot of them barely scrape by. That last group is by far the most interesting group.

Sure, the billionaire yacht owner and the millionaire guest have left you thinking how fabulous it must be to have so much wealth. It probably is fabulous. But chances are you won’t ever get to find out. The odds of you becoming a billionaire are slim.

After all, most superyacht crew don’t even grasp the opportunity they have of leaving yachting as a millionaire.

So what could you learn from that third group? The group of entrepreneurs who are barely scraping by? Surely that’s not a group you want to emulate?

Yes. You absolutely do.

The reason is simple. They are living a life that is meaningful to them. The value of that cannot be understated, because it’s worth more than money.

You, by comparison, are paid very well and have minimal expenses. Your income is regular and reliable. But are you living a meaningful life that is aligned fully with your values?

Is making sure the ultra-rich have a lovely holiday really your purpose in life?

Is that truly how you want to spend the precious and oh-so-limited amount of time you have to live?

Burning up your lifeforce in service of the mega wealthy?

No. Of course not.

Besides, that reliable salary is a money tap that can be switched off very easily. You don’t control the tap and you do nothing to generate the money that flows from it into your bank account. That money is created elsewhere.

That money is created by…

Entrepreneurs.

Even that third group of entrepreneurs, the ones who are scraping by, are generating money. Maybe not a lot. But they own a business that is making money. They own the tap, even if the flow of money is sometimes a trickle. It’s theirs.

The entrepreneur has a superpower you don’t have (but could do)

That alone makes them interesting. Billionaires and millionaires are in control of a tap that gushes money. But they are rarely connected to the source of the money in any meaningful way.

What makes this third category of ‘struggling entrepreneur’ so appealing is that the money is secondary to the enjoyment they get out of doing the thing that generates the money in the first place.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t first and foremost about making money. It’s about something much bigger. Following a purpose in life that is true to you.

So whatever money this group of entrepreneurs can make that sustains them, pays their bills, keeps them doing the thing they love, is enough. It’s not about having bags of money.

It’s about having enough money, however little, to keep their purposeful life on track. Because if that weren’t the case, most entrepreneurs would seek a more comfortable zone to live in.

One in which someone else tells them what to do. One in which someone else controls the flow of money. One where the opportunities afforded them are ones offered to them by others, rather than defined and achieved by themselves.

After reading all that, here’s a simple question:

Would you prefer to live like an employee or an entrepreneur?

If you want to live like an entrepreneur when you leave yachting, contact us, we can help.