[Article originally appeared on Future Sharks]
As a successful entrepreneur, Blake Mallen has built billion-dollar brands from the ground up in the health, wellness and lifestyle categories. He had no formal education in business or entrepreneurship; his college focus was on becoming a prominent attorney. But one defining day while interning at a law firm, Mallen was asked why he was working so diligently on getting the grades and building his resume. His response: “Well, isn’t that I’m supposed to do?” It was in that defining moment when Mallen realized that what he had been told all his life he was ‘supposed to do’ was not what he felt he was ‘meant to do.’ He had been following society’s prescription for success (“the script” as he calls it), which kept him stuck following a path of ‘supposed to’ and prevented him from ever even looking for his ‘meant to.’ That realization shifted Mallen’s mindset, starting him on the path to entrepreneurship. And now, nearly 20 years later, as noted in his popular TEDx Talk, he’s on a mission to help people shift their own life script and pursue their full potential.
Part of making that shift is addressing the mindset towards one’s career. Mallen sees true “freedom” as an important key to unlocking potential. Financial freedom, emotional freedom, or creative freedom only happens when someone feels truly free to think and do what they want, which then starts them towards discovering what they really do want. And today, as more and more people are choosing entrepreneurship as their path to achieve that kind of freedom, Mallen believes that simply deciding to become an entrepreneur does not immediately mean you think like one.
Future Sharks talked to Mallen about the types of mindset shifts he advises every aspiring entrepreneur to make to discover and realize their potential—not just in business but in life. Having inspired hundreds of thousands of new entrepreneurs over the last 20 years through his companies, and personally mentoring many into phenomenal success stories, Mallen describes seven of what he calls, ‘entrepreneurshifts,’ that are essential to embrace in order to become the entrepreneur you’re meant to be.