6 Steps to Becoming an Enjoypreneur

In the world of startups and digital business nothing is as cool as entrepreneurship. “Real entrepreneurship” seems to be on top of the money food chain. It is often used to differentiate the business elite from someone that “just works” as an employee.

But is that the full truth? Isn’t there a new form of entrepreneurship that is dedicated to the whole life of a person? In my hypotheses there are 6 stages that could be a way from evolving from an traditional entrepreneur to a new form of well-balanced business person I call the enjoypreneur.

1. While entrepreneurs are striving for maximizing profit in terms of money, the enjoypreneur has additional forms of gains from his/her doing. It can be helping others, gaining a profound value for a community or simply fulfilling a meaningful self-given purpose. A lot of successful entrepreneurs like Charly Kleissner or Richard Branson turn to that additional benefit of their work, when they realized all their monetary potential. Why not starting earlier with that enjoyable way of conducting business?
2. The dogma of an ever growing economy is not given anymore for the enjoypreneur. We learned in business school that prosperity and wealth can only be sustained if we constantly grow our business, and in turn the GDP of our country. But don’t we leave behind all other forms of growth, meaningful personal development, transcendental meditation, evolvement of new individual characteristics? While our traditional business is a power game, the enjoypreneur searches for fields of personal growth or wants to grow new forms of economic ecosystem like Markus Stelzmann or the founders of Ashoka
3. Our traditional entrepreneurial purpose is to overcome scarcities and deficits of our economy and gain a marginal cut. The enjoypreneur conducts her business rather as a stream of opportunities that arouse out of networks. Monetary liquidity is not the main asset to perform, it is rather being liquid and agile to adapt to market needs or even create them.
4. If we want to be an opportunity generating enjoypreneur as described in point 3 above, we still need to control our running costs. And as we know, the Internet gave us this basis for the production and distribution of goods that do not need pre-investment into factories and trucks. Also on the human resource cost front: Enjoypreneurs think twice before the hire an employee. They rather cooperate with other enjoypreneurs or larger organisations to fulfill the demand for the given project.
5. If they still hire or work together in a long lasting relationship with a person, enjoypreneurs build the task around the competences, skills and motivations of the very person and not try to find someone who fakes to be willing to meet the requirements you put out in a boring job post.
6. And finally a philosophical but no less an important factor: While traditional entrepreneurs run their business, enjoypreneurs understand themselves as the business. How much of endurance am I willing to invest (my stress, my health, less time with friends and family). And what is good for me, for my believes, where and how can I soundly work for the goals that I value?

Summing it up, anyone can become an enjoypreneur as long as we understand that our lives are as a blue ocean of opportunity and we make these daily choices based upon our overall existence. And, as a side-effect the money will enter into our lives. I truly believe this.

Martin Giesswein
Enjoypreneur apprentice

Martin Giesswein believes that in the digital age we need to adapt to new business lifestyles and redefine our learned way of working. After 25 years of traditional work as CEO, founder and trainer and 5 years as a happiness-seeking solopreneur, Martin is sharing his experiences, methods and tools for digital wellbeing and business mindfulness.

Martin Giesswein is an investor of Trending Topics.