You Need These Three People in Your Startup Today
Three Archetypes to Propel You to Success
I quit my day job last year and I decided to take matters into my own hands. I don’t want to rely on paychecks. I am going to choose myself and start an entrepreneurial journey.
Sounds easy right?
Not really. I’m now five months in unemployment and I haven’t made a single dollar. I have tried a couple of ventures and nothing stuck. I tried freelancing and consulting. They’re both service oriented and now I’m shifting into building a product.
I was never a kid with entrepreneurial potential. I don’t have stories of selling lemonade in the streets or reselling toys to my classmates.
This is the first time I’ve set foot in business and I’m a total beginner. In summary, I’m an employee for my whole life — taking orders and doing them well.
Most of us quit our jobs because we feel trapped. And once we start creating our own business, we create our own shackles.
Recently, I read the book E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber because Tim Ferriss heavily recommends it. This book reveals a set of problems faced by new business people. Once you understand the three archetypes, you will see your startup as a group effort.
Here are the three archetypes you need for your startup.
1. Technician
This represents the majority of people. If you get your hands dirty in your work, then this represents you. These are the people who execute.
They’re the ones baking the pie, designing products, or hammering nails.
When technicians build their business, they concentrate on getting work done. It’s about having results and working as many hours as they can. The technician’s primary resource is time. His work is directly correlated with the time that he puts in.
These people pride themselves on the sweat equity that they put in the business.
2. Manager
These people thrive on organizing and cleaning up the mess. They create systems and process that streamlines the company.
They are responsible for aligning everyone and making sure everyone has the right information about a project.
They deal with bookkeeping, filing your taxes, and legal compliances of your corporation. These things are necessary but don’t directly correlate to making a profit. But you still need to figure these things out.
3. Entrepreneur
This person holds the vision for the company. His main job is to make a mess and create a ruckus.
This is the troublemaker and rebel. He wants to reach for the moon and has an endless ball of energy to inspire everyone with his dreams.
He’s the captain of the ship.
They are generals who watch the war from an eagle’s vantage point. They are not in deep waters and they have an objective eye to every situation.
Determine what archetype best represents you and hire the others.
When Apple was starting out, Jobs and Wozniak were an Entrepreneur Technician team. They were messy because no one was there to clean up but they still made it through.
If you can’t hire other people, you need to switch from one persona to the other. Thriving with only one archetype is impossible. Those three people are interdependent. They feed off each other’s work.
Schedule your day in chunks of time. Allot your mornings for the Technician and the afternoon for the Manager. Set another day for your Entrepreneur and build a vision and make broad-stroke decisions.
What archetype are you?
Talk to you soon my friend.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 320,131+ people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here.
