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My goal with this podcast is to create a new category of high performing employee: The rebel intrapreneur. A rebel intrapreneur is not a regular employee. It is not a high performing employee. It is not a manager. Or an executive. Or a CxO.
A Rebel Intrapreneur is a radically different kind of employee. One who furthers the mission of the organization he/she services while simultaneously challenging the status quo from the inside.
I believe there is a need out there to bring people together who want something more out of their careers. People who want to make a difference, to advance the missions of their organizations, and to contribute in an outsized way. That is what we will learn how to do on this podcast.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. Both of my parents. My three brothers. Both grandparents. 7 of my nine aunts and uncles. My great uncle Hank. Don't get me started on my 28 (I think?) cousins. I was an entrepreneur. The first thing I did out of school was start a business making websites, reselling computers, and I even sold dial up internet access. Yes, I had a bank of US Robotics modems, two unix machines running Sun Solaris connected to more than one T-1 line. How I set that all up, I'll never remember. I did have a friend helping me. I was a co-founder and CEO. Sounds a lot more important than it actually was.
Then I took a job after realizing three things: 1) I wasn't making much money; 2) the responsibility of running a business was more than I wanted (could handle) out of life; 3) I saw an internet wave coming and I jumped on board through a job at a fast growing technology company.
I took that job, and I never looked back. Although many times I had thoughts of starting a business again, I reflected and was honest with myself, "That's not for me." I would not have admitted that out loud. But inside, "Nah."
It wasn't really until the middle of my career when I accepted 100% that I am not interested in being an entrepreneur. I no longer had an internal conflict about it.
I don't want to turn this into a memoire. My story is not the point. The point is entrepreneurs get all the glory, but there are so few entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs get all the attention.
The articles.
Podcasts.
Books.
Accolades.
Gushing fans.
We look up to entrepreneurs. We want to be like them. And why wouldn't we? On one end, there is the flashy hustle movement of young, high energy, entrepreneurs in Miami Beach with a Lambo and a bottle of Cristal. Part of me wants to be like that. Who doesn't want a house on Rivo Alto?
At the other end is the quiet, unassuming entrepreneur in your home town who owns the carpet center that everyone goes to, is on the board of the local food bank, and coaches youth soccer. Part of me wants to be like that, too. Living life on your terms and making a difference in your community?
Back to my point.
Entrepreneurs get all the glory, but there are very few entrepreneurs. How few? About 5% of us. I looked it up. It's all estimates, but 5% feels right. Look at your company and everyone in it. How many founders are there? One? Maybe there are three co-founders? Everyone else is an employee.
Look again. How many of your co-workers will leave that company to start their own company? Seven? Fourteen? Out of a company of 348 people? Even the PayPal mafia is only 22 people. And from what I can tell, not all became entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs get all the glory (and rightly so, I should add), but they cannot build their companies without employees. And, by the way, employees cannot have jobs without entrepreneurs. It's a team sport.
So, if most of us are employees, I am left to ask why we want to be entrepreneurs, even though we know deep down inside ourselves that it's not for us.
I suggest it's because we want agency in our lives. We want autonomy. Freedom AND responsibility. Often times, being an employee does not provide sufficient agency. So we dream of running our own business. Living life on our terms.
I realized in my career, when I was happiest and most productive, that I had a job that provided me necessary autonomy, freedom, and responsibility to make a difference without the burden of being an entrepreneur. When I had a job in which I did not have sufficient agency, I was not happy, and I left.
I think there is a role between entrepreneur and employee that provides the right balance between safety and risk, autonomy and structure, responsibility and direction, that suits us high-performing employees who peak into the club of entrepreneurship wishing we were in there, while at the same time admitting to ourselves, "I wanna be invited, but I don't really want to go."
That role is an intrapreneur.
Most high-performing employees want to make a different in their organizations. I personally jump on board with the company vision and mission and the founder's view of the world pretty quickly and with high energy. I want to advance that movement.
That's what an intrapreneur does.
There are many of us intrapreneurs and we want to make a difference. Sometimes our jobs don't let us do that.
And we wilt.
Sometimes our jobs do let us do that.
And we thrive.
I believe there is a need out there for intrapreneurs like us to connect with other intrapreneurs and to learn to be better intrapreneurs. The term intrapreneur is NOT new. There are some articles on it. A few good YouTube videos, as well. There are many books that dance around this subject. They just don't call it intrapreneurship. I want to talk to those authors and share those conversations. To help us all get better.
The term, or the role, of Intrapreneur is not quite right. There is something more.
And that something more....is why I am doing this podcast.
My true goal with this podcast is to create a new category of employee. The new category of employee is a rebel intrapreneur, which is also the name of this podcast of course.
A rebel intrapreneur is not a regular employee. It is not a high performing employee. It is not a manager. Or an execute. Or a CxO.
I Rebel Intrapreneur is a radically different kind of employee. One who furthers the mission of the organization he/she services while simultaneously challenging the status quo from the inside.
Steve Jobs said it was better to be a pirate than join the navy.
Tendayi Viki said one can be a pirate IN the Navy.
I rebel intrapreneur is a pirate IN the navy.
My mission in starting this podcast is to:
To help people advance their careers
To help people think of their career as something they can design, in control of, can be purposeful about, can further, can push.
To help people see how much agency they actually have.
I Just plane want to help people build outsized, successful careers that leave one feeling a sense of accomplishment.
My ultimate goal would be:
This stat:
57% of people who listen to Rebel Intrareneur get a promotion or a raise within 12 months of listening to the show.
Here is something to noodle on....
I want to be able to publish this stat one day,
57% of people who listen to Rebel Intrareneur get a promotion or a raise within 12 months of listening to the show.
Something like that.
Wouldn't that be great? I don't know how I will track that....maybe I won't. What's the einsteign quote. SOmetimes what can be counted doesn't count and what can't be counted, counts."
We may not every measure that stat......BUT the spirit of that stat will guide what I do. We're just going to help people learn how to treat their career like a thing they can advance, if they want to.
They don't have to.
But of they want to.
We are going to talk to fellow rebel intrapreneurs who are pursuing outsized careers.
I will do epidoes of me sharing ideas from people who inspired me....from books I've read.
We might even bring CEOs and entrepreneurs on the show to talk about how thye find rebel intrapreneurs.....OR we may have to convince htem to look for people like and HOW.
How to find a rebel intrapreneur? What to look for? Interview for? Create a framework. Like the Business Model You Canvas.
Rebel Intrapreneur canvas. Hmmmm. Maybe we'll create that too. Can I make a canvas?
Yes.
I think so.
Over time.
You can us ethat tool to Design your rebel intrapreneur career.
Christopher Lochhead - position yourself or BE positioned.
Here's the thing........while everyone else is tell people to quit their jobs and go out on their own and be a solopreneur, or an entrepreneur, or a content creator ......I will zag....and tell people.......entrepreneurship is not for everyone. One is not goooder or better or worse that the other......it's a choice. Like choosing to play football or baseball. Choosing to live in Chicago or Yuma. Etc. If you are a big city kinda guy don't live in Yuma. If you are a small town dude, don't live in Brooklyn.
Knowing who you are....and lining up your life around that.....that is the secret.
I'm just going to share the message......that being aRebel Intrapreneur is a radically different way to deisgn your career. And if you have the edge, the itch, the desire, and some extra ambition, but you don't want to risk or stress or ncertantly of being an entrepreneur, be a Rebel intrapreneur.....
If you listened this far, you can likely relate to this. I hope you will come with me on this journey. as we create a new category of employee.
The rebel intrapreneur.
References:
5% of the world is entrepreneurs: https://www.lunarmobiscuit.com/how-many-entrepreneurs-are-there-in-the-world/
The Paypal Mafia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
More about Bill:
Rebel Intrapreneur podcast website
Bill’s book: The Art of Agile Marketing: A Practical Roadmap for Implementing Kanban and Scrum in Jira and Confluence
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