Employee to Entrepreneur

Chapter 5An entrepreneurial mindset

‘Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.’

Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States

Mindset shows up often in this book. That’s because it is more important than any other factor in differentiating success from failure. I cannot stress this point enough. The right mindset is critical for creating the conditions to help you find success and fulfilment in both your professional and your personal life.

It comes down to how you show up and respond to adversity each and every day.

When I started Collective Campus, it was just me and my co-founder, Sean. We had no brand, no content, no marketing or distribution channels, and little to no track record. Yet we were positioning ourselves to sell to large enterprise clients. I’ll never forget those first few months. We set up literally hundreds of meetings and calls between us (according to my Google Calendar history we took more than 500 in the first three months). How? We asked. We did all manner of things, from sending messages to people on LinkedIn who we thought were in our target audience, to guessing people’s email addresses and requesting introductions in the odd case that we had a mutual connection.

These weren’t sales meetings. ...