Why ideas die at the “entrepreneur” stage

Why ideas die at the “entrepreneur” stage

Read Time: 5-minutes

Starting out, I made the same mistake most entrepreneurs make: 

I thought like an entrepreneur. 

Focusing on ideas, trends, and scaling my business. Getting ahead of my competition. Working 80 hour weeks.

I was doing everything right. And that was the problem..

Clients were coming in but I was exhausted. 

I knew entrepreneurship was hard but I was putting in a ton of hours and growing very little. My business never grew. 

But then I realized it wasn’t about working hard, but thinking differently.

If you’re ready to transform your footwear brand, let’s talk. Book a free Discovery Call here.

Thinking like an Entrepreneur kept me stuck:

Thinking like an entrepreneur kept me living like an entrepreneur.

Always looking for leads.
Barely keeping my head above water.

It kept me stuck. 

What got my business started isn’t the same as what keeps it running.
Passion alone doesn’t deliver growth, sustainability, or freedom.

If I kept on focusing on staying ahead of others, I wouldn’t grow and cultivate what I was building.

Instead, I had to think like a Business Owner.

When I started in graphic design, I didn’t only like designing. 

I wanted to make things real, so I jumped to product design. But I couldn’t think like a designer anymore, I had to learn other aspects. I had to think beyond my designs.  

I traveled the world, hitting 18+ countries to study the market. I walked factory floors, visited mold shops, and haggled in local markets.

If I kept thinking like a designer, I wouldn’t have been successful in at:

• Designed a sneaker franchise that pulled in $550K in its first season

• Boosting product margins for men’s footwear by 3% in 1 year

• Launching a private label. 

When I was building my business, I had to approach it with the mindset of an actual business.

Stop chasing ideas, start building systems. 
Stop making gut decisions, start relying on data.
Stop following trends, start anticipating markets.
Stop making the decisions yourself, start hiring for expertise.
Stop seeing failure as a stopping point, start seeing it as feedback.

I needed to think differently.

I need to think like a Business Owner.

Focus on how you help the client: 

Everything I did wasn’t about marketing, it was about positioning. 

Making sure clients knew how I could help them. 

Here’s how I fixed my positioning: 

1. Building processes to handle challenges consistently.

2. Making decisions with long-term strategy, not short-term excitement.

3. Hiring expertise instead of wearing every hat myself.

4. Measuring success with data, not gut feelings.

5. Embracing failure as feedback, not a stopping point.

If you want to compete as a business owner, you need to think bigger.

2024 was the year I stopped thinking like a freelancer and started thinking like a business.

Evolving from a freelance design service into a comprehensive footwear innovation partner, building a five-person team, launching Creative Caffeine newsletter, and establishing industry authority through speaking engagements and sustainable collaborations – all because I shifted focus from showing expertise to what clients need.

As for 2025? 

That’s the year I scale like a business.

Your Turn: Start thinking like a Business

If you’re stuck in the entrepreneur trap, here’s how you get out:

• I identify the start point & end points for your clients 

  • I take clients from X to Y.

• What’s your method to get them to the end?

• How will you find your clients?

It’s not just about your work, but how you structure it.

Cheers!
Erin

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