The Pioneers Club

The Authentic Entrepreneur: Balancing Multiple Roles Without Losing Yourself as an Entrepreneur

• Monika Lerch & Patrick Öffl • Season 2 • Episode 9

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In this episode of The Pioneers Club, we dive into the life of an entrepreneur - where you're not just an expert anymore, but have to juggle all kinds of different roles. From CEO to CMO to CFO, you’re more than just your expertise.

However, you still want to stay true to yourself while tackling these new responsibilities. How can you be authentic in every role?


Join us as we explore this topic and discuss

3:57 - Facing the reality of entrepreneurship & the necessity to wear all kinds of hats

12:21 - How to stay authentic while stepping into different roles in 4 clear steps

12:55 - Step 1: Adopting a Growth Mindset

14:39 - Step 2: Gaining clarity on your role and the specific responsibilities of this role

20:57 - Step 3: Exploring authentic ways of fulfilling your role

22:42 - Step 4: Requesting help & delegating where necessary


Tune in for a fun and honest chat that will help you balance all those hats without losing yourself.










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Your Host:
Monika Lerch
https://www.monikalerch.com/
Linkedin: /in/monikalerch/
Instagram: @themonikalerch

Your Co-Host:
Patrick Öffl
https://www.amikifilms.com/
Linkedin: /in/patrickoeffl/
Instagram: @patrickoeffl

Monika This is the Pioneers Club podcast. 


Patrick The community podcast for driven entrepreneurs and leaders. 


Monika Here you can connect with like minded people, create a sense of belonging and gain more agency in your daily life. Hi, my name is Monika and I'm your host. I help impact driven freelancers, entrepreneurs and leaders live their full potential and go from feeling overwhelmed, stuck and confused to being confident, clear-headed and focused as they go after their goals. As a mindset and systemic coach, I focus primarily on topics such as confidence, high performance, self coaching and self leadership and use my mindfulness based and systemic approach to help my clients thrive with more ease. 


Patrick And I'm your co-host, Patrick, an entrepreneur just like you. I'm an international media producer working on live sports, premium documentaries and digital content. I help people bring their stories to life and work with a global network of partners to create engaging content. I live through the topics of our podcast, just like you, and I will try to ask the questions you might have. 


Monika As entrepreneur, as CEO, we are responsible for so many different things. How do you deal with handling so many… well, wearing so many different hats?


Patrick Actually, it was something that I have to admit was a good thing, I didn't think about too much before starting up as a freelancer and as an entrepreneur, because the thing is that you're not fully aware of all these things coming towards you. As you said, wearing the different hats. I mean, you always have this dreamlike vision of what it's like to be an entrepreneur. Yes, I'm my own boss. I can decide everything for myself. Yeah, you can. But the other side of that coin is you also have to. 


Monika You are responsible for so many things. 


Patrick I mean, it's financing, legal frameworks, contracting, business development, all these things that in a bigger company usually are taken care of by different departments, different managers, colleagues, specialists in this field. And now suddenly you're all of that in one person. And like a week ago, you didn't know any of that. 


Monika I think it's funny that you said you were glad that you didn't know about that. For me, it was quite the contrary because I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. I had watched my parents and I had seen people act in very different roles. So having to do marketing and sales while also developing the product while also delivering the product, and then also taking care of legal issues and taking care of people management, whether this be your own team or whether it be your stakeholders, partners, collaborators, whatever it is. So I never had this naivety, and I guess it would have been easier if I hadn't been that aware of it. I think this was one of my major mistakes at the beginning. I tried to take care of everything at the same time. 


Patrick I think it's good and bad at the same time, to be honest. I mean, yeah, a bit of naivety is honestly, for me it was quite helpful because if you're too overwhelmed with everything that's coming towards your way, maybe you don't take the step in the first place. But I also had this great network of people that once I did it, that helped me with these questions. I mean, there are tax things that I didn't know about, how to deal with invoicing issues, tax issues, and there are some legal issues, how to set up a company in the first place and you grow into it. Yes, that's true to a certain point, but you also have to be willing to get to know these things and learn more with every step that you take. 


Monika And that's why we are talking about this today as well, because this topic is so important. Every entrepreneur, every founder and CEO has to face this moment of recognition where they are going to be honest with themselves and be like, hey, I do have very different things to take care of. My role is not one of being an expert in one thing, and doing just this one thing, and everything else will be taken care of. This doesn't happen for you as an entrepreneur and a CEO. So as a coach, I see this so many times how people struggle with this. On the one hand, because they are not clear what they have to do, who they are even anymore in this role. And on the other hand, I see and this is going to be our focus today, the topic of authenticity. And since we are talking about authenticity this season so much, to find out how to still be true to yourself, how to still be true to your values and strengths, and also the things that you like, that you are passionate about. Because let's be honest, a lot of people that we know that who have started their own business didn't start it out because they didn't have another option. They started it because they were passionate about something. They wanted freedom and the freedom to do something that they thought was meaningful and fulfilling and rewarding. And now all of a sudden, you find yourself in a position where you spend maybe 10 to 20% of your time doing what you thought you would do, and 80% is taking care of all the other people, all the other tasks, all the other things that just suddenly pop up as your responsibility. 


Patrick Yeah, it's sort of reality kicking in and giving you a kick in the butt, basically telling you, you thought it was this easy? Now let's get down to the real business and let's take care of all the things that you're now responsible off, that you may or may not have known before taking that step. 


Monika Which is actually why this is such a pet peeve of mine, to tell people to just follow their passion or to just do what they love. Which was kind of part of the narrative when we looked at how entrepreneurship was glorified and presented as this beautiful thing that you are just going to pursue because you have a love for something. And growing up in an entrepreneurial family, I knew that this was part of it. Of course you should do and engage in something that you are passionate about and that you are good in. So you need your strengths, you need your values to be fulfilled there. But at the same time, this is just one part of the complex reality that you have been faced with. And if you are not aware of that, I don't know how it is for you, but I know for myself as well, even though I didn't have this degree of naivety, but also sometimes it was a little bit… I was unnecessarily aware of things before they were relevant, but I see it with a lot of clients or people that I meet that this reality kicking in, this moment, comes with a lot of stress, a lot of before that also built up emotions of being an impostor, feeling like you are confused and don't even know what's important anymore, what you should focus on, where you should put your attention, like you are constantly falling behind on the things that you should deliver, and you are already actually implementing the things that you are just finding out are important, and that you are just learning how to do. This is something that I've heard my clients say so often. I am learning things that I actually already needed to implement yesterday. So they constantly feel like they are not doing enough. 


Patrick It's a constant learning process, but you're always learning on the go. That's how I feel when I'm going through these things. 


Monika Yes.


Patrick Because it's basically okay, I need to do something new - and I'm going to share a story now for this. Back when I was still working in retail, it was just during university and it was supposed to start as this you do this once a week for a few hours, you help out. And then suddenly two weeks later, because people fell through, I had to lead a team of a few people. I think it was 4 or 5 people. And the issue with that was not me not being able to do the job. It was more like so many other things suddenly came into play. It was leading a group of people that you haven't really known that well, then the whole financing thing and then the whole accounting part, that was all things that I had no idea about. And suddenly you were supposed to know this while, literally just a day ago, you were just to help. 


Monika But that's the thing. We think that we are supposed to know all of this, and this is one of the major mistakes or misconceptions that I see with people who are even ready or who are agreeing to step into this role or into this kind of responsibility, that they still feel as if they should already know all of that, which is just humanly impossible. If you agree, or when you decide that this is going to be part of your life, that you are going to take on this challenge, the illusion that you are going to stay an expert in what you do 100% of the time is going to hold you back. Because what you actually need is to step into a growth mindset and to allow yourself to acknowledge and build and also kind of enjoy your strengths, because they will give you the confidence they will give you also the trust in yourself as well, but then also to deliberately stand and step into this unknown. Go out of your comfort zone and allow yourself to grow into these different responsibilities. Because what I see a lot of the time is that people then put themselves under the pressure of feeling like they should know all of that already when they agree to step into this role, which is not true. You grow as you take on the role, acknowledge the challenges, the responsibilities, whatever it is that comes with this role, and then find your way of dealing with that. 


Patrick And it gets even more challenging when you think about it, that you were supposed to know this. Like, people give you that feeling. You have to know this when you step into this role. And then the whole authenticity part that we're talking about comes into play as well. So it's like, okay, you're supposed to stay yourself, the person that you've been before in that previous role, maybe, and then you have to do like a completely different job. So it's like this almost war going on inside of you where you have to fulfill both these things and it's not possible, I think. 


Monika Which is actually a conversation that I had with a client. We had this conversation where we talked about what it means when other people tell you that you haven't changed at all, whether this is a compliment or not. And I can say for myself, if I meet someone after one two years and they tell me that I haven't changed at all, that I have stayed the same. I do regard this as a little bit…


Patrick Of an insult. 


Monika It is for me an insult because I hope that I have gone through so many experiences - and this doesn't mean to be inauthentic, or that I was inauthentic before that. It means that I have evolved. That I have changed and grown through the experiences that I went through. Sometimes people don't view it this way, which is why we then don't allow ourselves this growth or this period of transition, which is difficult to handle. And let's not forget, it's nice to talk about authenticity and about growth in this mindful way. But once you are CEO, once you are a solopreneur as well, once you have your own business, you are responsible for bringing in money every month. And this adds, of course, a lot of pressure, if you feel like you have to get things right in order to be able to deliver and to succeed. So this additional pressure is not easy to handle. And how to then stay true to yourself and how to stay authentic. Well, that's sometimes something that many people forget about. And then they only remind themselves that this might be important to look at again once they feel so unhappy, so unfulfilled, and so inauthentic that they actually don't even recognize themselves in this role anymore. 


Patrick But you've already given us a hint of how to deal with the pressure, and this conflict of being torn between authenticity and fulfilling, well, let's say different roles. Because you don't just have 1 or 2, especially as an entrepreneur, you have various roles and numerous roles that you have to fulfill on, well, on a daily basis, actually. And that was having this growth mindset. And we've been talking about it for, well, a lot of times on the podcast already, because it is what gives an entrepreneur a toolset to evolve even further. But how can the growth mindset help in this specific way? 


Monika Well, the growth mindset is definitely the first step, but also the overall attitude that you have to adopt in order to succeed in this challenge. What does it mean to have a growth mindset? Well, we are going to talk about this in our next session in a lot more detail when we talk about Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset”. She determined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset. But to have a growth mindset means that you actually view yourself as a person with various strengths, assets, capabilities which can be developed and should be developed as you go on and make different experiences, and as you go and take on different challenges and you grow with these challenges. This means also that you have a very different perspective on how to deal with risk, how to take on these challenges and deal with them specifically, how to deal with mistakes once you make them. Because in this growth mindset, typically you would see mistakes as an opportunity to learn, while in the fixed mindset you would see them as something that you would blame yourself for and then actually decide that obviously you are not capable of doing this, whatever it is you were trying to do. So the growth mindset will help you succeed in this challenge of evolving whatever your initial strengths were, to spread them and to fulfill this new chapter and fulfill this new role that you have agreed to accept. 


Patrick So it's basically an openness to learning new skills to evolve your skill set that you already have into something that you might need or definitely need in the future. But even if I have this growth mindset now, there is one issue. What do I learn? I mean, is there even like, okay, now I am an entrepreneur and I have this growth mindset. What kind of books do I buy? What kind of skills do I learn? How do I move on from this? 


Monika One of the major challenges that I see in people [is] that they don't know exactly what it is that they should then focus on. Because especially if you have a growth mindset, you will be willing to learn about new skills and new strengths that you have to develop endlessly, potentially. So you might really get distracted by everything. And there will be a lot of people, especially with social media, especially with the internet, people telling you that their specific field is the most important one, right? So salespeople will tell you that sales is, of course, the most important thing. Brand strategists will tell you that nothing will work out without branding, so you might get distracted a lot if you don't know what to focus on. And this is then the second step that you need in order to succeed in this challenge is to clearly define which responsibilities, and therefore which different hats you have to wear in this role that you have. And this might differ depending on your business, depending on your situation, on your industry, on the size that you have, whether you have a team, whether you don't have a team. So there is no fixed answer. But of course, we, the two of us, we have studied economics, so we have a defined idea of which departments need to be taken care of in a business. But if you are completely new to business, if you are completely new to entrepreneurship, it might even be good to get some advice and look at these different things, these different challenges with an expert who is able to tell you which kind of systems you have to build in order to set up a sustainable business. 


Patrick Maybe it can also be as easy as looking at a company that, well, you're not trying to replace, but that the field that you're also in and look at them like, what kind of departments do they have? How do they operate on a bigger scale? It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have your own legal department, your own accounting department or whatever. But you have to do a certain level of these things in your entrepreneurship, in your little company, in your Start-Up, maybe. And that just gives you an overview of all the things that could come towards your way. 


Monika That's a great strategy. At the same time, I would be careful with that because if you look at competitors or if you look at bigger companies who are already much further ahead in the journey, you might make the mistake that I have made that you want to achieve or want to take care of too many things that are simply not important for you at that point of time. 


Patrick I would actually see it more as a guideline rather than an okay, I have to do all these things. I have to incorporate it. It doesn't hurt that you are aware of your competitors or the companies that you're comparing yourself with are somewhat dealing with it. 


Monika Very much so. Yes, this is a good idea to have into what might be important, at least at some point of your journey and what to take care of. But also, as I see it, not only the departments, not only the specific job profiles that will have to be fulfilled in your business are important. With defining roles and responsibilities, it's also about defining the role that you, as the CEO or as the entrepreneur, will fulfill in relationship to the people that you work with. So this is something that we talked about as well, because one thing is the job profile that you will have with a different task, with the different priorities and different departments that you will maybe even have to take on. But the other thing is also your role as you fulfill these things. What kind of responsibilities are you going to take on when it comes to the people that you work with? For example, if you have a team, is your role as the leader to give them a vision? Or is your role as the leader to be a mediator and to take care of their needs as well? Or is their… your role to just focus on the strategy and outsource everything else? You will have to be clear who you are in relationship to others as well. And this is also something that a lot of people miss. 


Patrick It's also quite hard because when you start out as an entrepreneur and having a certain growth in your company, in your start-up, and you take new people on that role changes. So, for example, what I told before, when I was from that helping position, going to a sort of leadership role where I had to lead people, your role towards these people changes so much because suddenly you have to deal with the needs of these people and then be a mediator sometimes between them, because they are your employees then. As an entrepreneur, it's really hard to actually stay on top of these changes and be aware how your role changes in that. 


Monika And that's also where I, as a mental coach, get called in quite a lot. So, for example, I can see a lot of people pleasers struggling when they step into this responsibility of becoming the leader because they are suddenly trying to please their team. They are trying to take care of everyone and make everyone happy, which simply is not possible as the responsible person also for setting the strategic vision, for deciding how to set up the systems, for maybe even letting people go, who has to deal with conflicts and deadlines and everything of that. You can’t without stressing yourself out too much…


Patrick You can't really, ‘cause from my experience it just tears you up. It’s… you want to be everybody's friend, but at one point you have to be the boss. So you have to take the decisions. 


Monika And what does it mean then to be the boss while also being a friendly boss? Maybe not the friend, but a friendly boss. What does it mean to be a people oriented boss who fulfills also your own need, maybe for generosity, for respect that you want to show other people? For whatever it is that you want to have, which values you want to have fulfilled in your relationships. How do you fulfill them in an authentic way, while still being aware of your own limits and responsibilities in this role? This is something that you will have to confront and answer for yourself. And this already then leads us into the third step, which is actually what you are already engaging then in. Once you know exactly what responsibilities you have, which kind of activities you need to do and which roles you are taking on, you will have to find a way of fulfilling them in an authentic manner. This means you have to be very aware of your values and your strengths, and then look for different people. Maybe this is a good strategy to look at other people doing these different things, and then decide which kind of role model is really right for you. 


Patrick Could it also be a little bit of a trial and error thing that, even though there are the closest and the loudest ones that we're often most gravitating towards, but even though it doesn't work for me, I will probably have to try that out to see, it doesn't really fit, right?


Monika We always have to try things out. We have to experiment. We have to learn and grow and go through this process of, just like you said, trial and error. This is one thing, just like what we said before, that people are trying to already be good at it before they actually have gone through this growth process. What we are describing now in step one, 2 or 3, and we are going to talk about step four in just a few minutes. But what you are going through is a growth process. And any growth process is not already predictable from the start, because if it were, you wouldn't be doing something new for you. But this takes a little bit of time, or at least energy and deliberation. 


Patrick But even if I try out all these things and I mean, we talked about it before, I can’t simply do everything at once. We're talking about step four now, which is requesting help and also outsourcing a bit. And I feel like it's very important to talk about this because, especially as entrepreneurs, we sometimes feel like we have to do it ourselves. We have to make it on our own because we feel like it's our job. Now that we are our own company, our own boss, that we have to deal with everything on our own. I mean, we talk about it all the time that a network of people is already important, but this requesting help and outsourcing actually means more than that. 


Monika In step three, you will probably come to certain realizations where you will also potentially have to be honest with yourself and have to agree that certain responsibilities, that they will simply not align with your values and your strengths. Which is fine as long as you accept it and then request the help or delegate whatever it is that you are not capable… or not “not capable”, because I do believe that any one of us would be capable of so much more than we think. But it really is also a question of is it useful for you to invest so much time into getting barely good at something, while someone else who has their strengths in a certain field could actually take this on and do so much better of a job, while you would have so much more energy then to focus on something else where you really are good in. 


Patrick It's a cost benefit question basically. Do I invest the time in learning, for example, how to be a tax advisor or a lawyer when in fact I can just hire someone to do the job for me who's way faster. And it doesn't take months or years to get into that. 


Monika And that's part of being authentic in your role as an entrepreneur and CEO, is also to acknowledge your limits, or at least the limits where you want to set them as well. But it is this declaration of empowerment also to let go of certain things. And this is quite contrary to the image of the self-made entrepreneur or the self-made success that we have, where we feel that we should be able to do everything by ourselves. 


Patrick It's also quite tricky because when you think about it, as an entrepreneur, no matter what industry you're in, there are certain things you have to know. So when I think about my job, there are certain things, for instance, when it comes to labor law, when it comes to taxation or accounting, that are important for my job as a production manager that I have to know. And yes, I know them now because I grew into it, I learned about it and I tried to learn new things about it. But there's a certain level that I know, and then everything that's above that, I'm basically saying, okay, we need to ask a specialist for it. That's exactly what you just said. That's investing so much time in it when you can basically just ask someone who tells you the answer in ten minutes. 


Monika That's exactly it. So let's go with this example. We both know that these are… these departments, so law or accounting, are very important. We don't ignore them because they don't feel authentic to us. We know that they are part of our responsibility, but we find an authentic way of dealing with them. This means investing so much time and effort in order to still be responsible for them and still oversee them, but not for us to be the ones responsible for actually doing everything that is involved in fulfilling this responsibility. Instead, we focus on where our strengths are. I can see this with a lot of people once they also grow beyond a certain stage. I can see this with my clients happening. It's just impossible to still keep on doing everything. At some point you would then have to decide either you are going to just keep your business at a certain level where you can really realistically stay the one in charge of everything, but this will just put a natural boundary on everything. Or if you do have a big vision, a big dream - most of our audience have this vision and this dream of achieving a much bigger impact beyond what they alone are capable of - then you will need to let go of this illusion of having to do everything on your own at the same time. 


Patrick So in the end, you're saying it's a balancing act between trying to stay authentic to yourself, but still taking on new roles which we can’t escape as an entrepreneur. And the important thing when it comes to that is just acknowledging that this balancing act will never stop. You will always have to work on it. You will always be in sort of a constant conflict a little bit, because you always have to work on it. You always have to work on that balance where you are authentic, and you will always try out new things and potentially you will fail, as we all do. And then you will get up, dust yourself off and get going again and try it again. 


Patrick If you enjoyed this episode, share it with your fellow entrepreneurs so they can listen too. Grab the link in our show notes and send it to them. 


Monika If you're looking to join our tribe of movers and shakers to get a sense of belonging and fresh insights, join our Pioneers Club community. The link to our community is waiting for you in our show notes as well. 


Patrick And don't forget to connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram and let us know, what was a helpful thought or inside that you've gained from this episode?


Monika Have any questions or ideas for us? Head over to our LinkedIn or Instagram pages and tell us. We read every submission and would love to answer your question in a later episode too. So thanks for joining us. 


Patrick See you in the next one.