From employee to entrepreneur mindset

Find Your Superpower newsletter 066

Read time: 5 minutes­­­   

Topics covered: Mindset, branding, LinkedIn 30-day challenge

I have been really busy. In a good way.

This week I had three public engagements, one of them being very special to me: I conducted a pro-bono 2h LinkedIn branding and storytelling workshop for my friend Kim Underhill and her group of fearless females at She Brilliance.

That evening, I got to meet young women who are climbing the career ladder, as well as senior professionals who are mentoring them.

I shared with them the three mindset shifts that have helped me to move away from viewing LinkedIn as a humble bragging playground, to viewing it as a powerful, monetizable tool that allows me to gain direct (and free) access to my dream clients and collaborators.

A paradigm shift: from employee to employer mindset

In general, here’s a pretty vanilla definition of an employee versus an entrepreneur:

Employee: one main revenue stream, fixed hours and fixed working schedule, work from office, one boss (aka one client), more work seldom means more pay, uses LinkedIn only when they need to find a new job

Entrepreneur: multiple revenue streams, flexible hours and flexible working schedule, work from anywhere, multiple bosses (aka multiple clients), more work usually means more pay, uses LinkedIn regularly to maintain pipeline of clients

But you already knew that.

Let’s move on to the definition of employee versus entrepreneur, when used to describe one’s mindset:

An employee mindset is one where we start branding and posting on LinkedIn mainly to find a new job role.

We are not particularly interested in staying top of mind in our industry as our salary is fixed and determined solely by our employer and HR, plus our supervisor may not even be on LinkedIn anyway!

We lurk on LinkedIn and we seldom leave comments on posts by industry leaders for a variety of reasons, one of them being we view attempts by other people to share their client portfolio, success stories, testimonials and value proposition on LinkedIn as gross and not something we would demean ourselves by doing.

We are proud of what we have achieved in our career to date: surely our industry reputation and past accomplishments must speak for itself.

An entrepreneur mindset is one where we are always branding and posting on LinkedIn.

We use LinkedIn to stay top of mind and top of category in our industry, and to increase our surface area of luck.

We view attempts by other people using LinkedIn to discuss their value proposition as a strategic and budget-friendly way to attract like-minded individuals, headhunters, future collaborators and industry mates.

We follow and comment on posts by industry leaders on LinkedIn, and we even take a further step to invite them to mentor us and collaborate with us on our pet projects.

Despite our strong industry reputation and years of experience, we stay humble and hungry, and regularly hustle on LinkedIn to attract new opportunities, collaborators and industry friends everywhere. 

Some people seem to get all the luck

As a LinkedIn coach, I work with many corporate executives and senior professionals from big-brand MNCs, FAANG companies and government organizations who have permanent positions and earn an extremely high fixed salary.

You could argue that they don’t need to use LinkedIn.

But those with an entrepreneurial mindset still do.

They are humble, hungry and hustling.

When they do it well, they get speaking opportunities, DMs from industry VIPs and peers, feature profiles in magazines and newspapers, nominations to society awards and lists (like Forbes 30 under 30), invitations to join paid board directorships, visibility from their supervisors, and even attention from HQ in a completely different country.

In one senior Top Voice’s case, their in-house communications team even asked them to help train their colleagues on how to use LinkedIn!

In some cases, it could also represent a kind of insurance. They don’t only use LinkedIn when they are in need of a job, as it would be too late by then to build up trust and support from their industry peers. As a result, they regularly get DMs from headhunters and recruiters who were referred to them by others, and they have loads of options to consider.

And that, my friend, is how some people appear to be so lucky; all they did was to increase their surface area of luck, to allow luck to strike them more easily.

I will be sharing more about the three mindset shifts I’ve made at my 29 August free branding seminar here. Join us if you can!

Six days to the launch of my free 30-Day LinkedIn Challenge!

Did you know that you’re just one LinkedIn post away from making a new industry friend, being featured by a LinkedIn editor, getting invited to contribute to an op-ed by a newspaper journalist, or being invited to interview for an unlisted position by a headhunter?

You look skeptical.

Perhaps the above has never happened to you (yet!).

I promise that it happens more often than you think, because headhunters, decision makers and journalists trawl LinkedIn daily, and only 1-3% of us are posting on this platform.

I don’t think it is fair that 1-3% of us receive all of the limelight and opportunities on LinkedIn while you lurk in the shadows. Do you?

I have created a free LinkedIn 30-day challenge to help you get into the action.

In this 30-day challenge, we will post once a week on LinkedIn over four weeks. The challenge starts on 28 July. Let’s make these four weeks count.

Three of you stand to win the following prizes in the 30-day challenge:
- Find Your Superpower: How to rebrand yourself on LinkedIn masterclass @ US$99
- LinkedIn Success Mindset e-book and masterclass @ US$99
- A hardcover lined notebook journal @ US$25
- A card holder @ US$9.90
- A MAD LAB card game @ SGD$19.90
- A Chronicles of Evolution hardcover book @ SGD$29.90
- A copy of Asian Scientist Magazine and Supercomputing Asia @ SGD$18
🏆Total prize winnings = ~US$270

I have also created a set of rules to help my six-week bootcamp co-facilitator Amanda Cua and me pick our three winners:

1. They must complete all four checkpoints (i.e. one post a week)
2. Each post should help their target audience better appreciate their professional brand and value proposition
3. Each post should receive healthy levels of engagement and comments from their target audience

Before anyone frets about our judging criteria, I want you to remember that all of you are winners if you achieve the true goal of this challenge: developing a habit of posting weekly on LinkedIn on professionally-relevant topics.

Our three winners will be announced at a free Find Your Superpower masterclass led by Amanda and me on 29 August, 11 am - 12 noon (GMT+8):

Let’s slay on LinkedIn,
Juliana AKA gamemaster

Thanks for reading issue 066 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.

For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 38,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.

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