Welcome to the Industry Insider! Today we’re talking about how to break free from employee mentality. We’re Shane and Rachel Krider, and this is one of our favorite subjects to talk about! We hope you learn several things from this episode.

Are You Really Free?

• Do you operate on somebody else’s schedule and agenda?
• Do you have to look to someone else to find out whether what you’re doing is really valuable?
• Do you feel robbed of your own autonomy?
• Are you giving someone else your time and money?

What We Mean by Employee Mentality

Our definition of employee mentality:

Taking personal responsibility to get an outcome.

This may sound too simple, but there are millions of very intelligent people who are trapped in this mentality.

One of the key aspects of employee mentality is the need to have the right answer. THE right answer, not a right answer. We’re taught that there’s one right answer only, one method of doing any given task.

We know someone who placed ads and misspelled half the words, but he still got leads. The point is, he did the ads, even if he didn’t do a perfect job. People waste time trying to do it perfectly and it’s beyond counterproductive.

Many people aren’t any better at marketing than anyone else. It just comes down to consistently DOING IT. Throwing it against the wall and seeing if it sticks. It works!

If you get something wrong, don’t apologize! It’s OK. Don’t beat yourself up.

Don’t be worried about what your third-grade teacher would think. Be willing to experiment, do things the “wrong” way every now and then, try things to see what works and what doesn’t.

Have fun while you’re doing things, too. Give yourself some space and some freedom.

Don’t be a student afraid of the teacher, be a student of the outcome. Don’t worry so much about doing the “work” right—remember when your math teacher would grade you for “showing your work” and if you didn’t do that correctly, you wouldn’t get full credit for a right answer? Your life isn’t like that anymore. If you get the right outcome, it doesn’t matter if you did everything “by the books.”

Case in point: Rachel is a successful expert in branding and marketing, making over a million dollars per year. But she dropped out of school! She didn’t get the marketing degree and gain her success by following all the rules her teachers told her. She didn’t do anything “by the books” or what people would consider to be “the right way.” But she got the outcome: she’s a successful marketer. And she did it by giving herself the space and freedom to see what worked and what didn’t.

Highlights from This Episode

• What we mean by employee mentality 2:40
• Become your own judge and jury if you’re going to be a self-made millionaire 20:00
• Why someone who is successful in the corporate world might not necessarily be as successful in this business—it takes different skills. 28:00

View the entire episode here!