3 Reasons Entrepreneurial Leadership Is Beautiful

I love entrepreneurial leadership. I love the uncertainty, the responsibility, the freedom, the challenge—and, most of all, the opportunity to build something that matters.

Here are three reasons I believe entrepreneurial leadership is beautiful.

1. We get to build around a core ideology. As entrepreneurs, we get to build organizations around something bigger than making money, including:

• Our purpose—the fundamental reason we exist that has nothing to do with money;

• Our core values—the principles that guide how we behave;

• And the BHAG (big, hairy audacious goal—a term coined by by writer Jim Collins) that makes the dent in the universe we want to create.

Our businesses give us a vehicle to bring those principles to life. We get to decide what we believe, what we stand for, who we serve, and how we want to make a difference. Then we get to build an organization that lives those values and fulfills that purpose every day.

That is a remarkable privilege.

2. Entrepreneurship is the ultimate self-development journey.

More than 25 years ago, I heard the grandfather of personal development, Jim Rohn, say, “Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”

He often challenged people to set a goal to earn $100,000 in a year—not because the money itself was significant, but because of who you would have to become to achieve it.

That, to me, is the beauty of entrepreneurial leadership.

Yes, we are building a company. We are bringing a product or service to market. We are creating value for customers, employees, partners, investors, and our communities. But something else is happening at the same time. Our role as entrepreneur is being developed.

Entrepreneurship forces us to become better communicators, better decision-makers, better leaders, better listeners, better thinkers, and better versions of ourselves.

Rohn famously said, “To have more than you’ve got, become more than you are.” The business becomes a vehicle for our own development.

The books I read, the conferences I attend, the peer groups I learn from, and the counsel I receive from colleagues and mentors all help me grow into a leader capable of building the organization I envision.

The bigger the vision, the bigger I have to become.