Your Next Five Moves summary

Choosing the right path in life, professionally or personally, boils down to stacking the odds of success in your favor. Success isn’t necessarily about how objectively good you are at something, but how well you can leverage your strengths relative to your competitors. Understanding this requires deep self-awareness and a clear-eyed assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. This self-reflection is the first – and perhaps most critical – move you need to make on your journey toward success.

To start, let’s apply this concept to the professional arena. In recent years, entrepreneurship has been glorified and held up as the career to aspire to. Social media is flooded with images of CEOs flaunting their luxurious lifestyles – designer wardrobes, private yachts or jets, and celebrity connections. It’s easy to be enticed by the glitz and glamor, especially when these individuals are posting to their Instagram or TikTok from the Bahamas or Maldives while you’re stuck in a stuffy office. However, it’s important to remember that social media often only captures the highlights, rarely the bloopers or outtakes.

While it’s true that the entrepreneurial path can bring massive rewards, it also comes with massive risks. Massive risks, enormous demands, significant sacrifices, and near-daily headaches, to be precise. If your reasons for pursuing entrepreneurship are limited to the pursuit of a fancy wardrobe, yacht, and connections, you’re setting yourself up to lose. There are simply too many others playing the entrepreneurial game because they genuinely intend to change the world, and you’ll be outplayed every round.

So, after carefully assessing your strengths, weaknesses, and “why,” you might realize that entrepreneurship isn’t the best fit for you – and that’s perfectly okay. There are countless other paths to a fulfilling and successful life. One alternative to consider is becoming an “intrapreneur.” Intrapreneurs remain within a company but work to become indispensable, driving innovation and growth from within the organization. A successful intrapreneur thinks, acts, and innovates like a CEO but without the associated risks and pressures of the official title. In doing so, intrapreneurs soon stand out to their managers, upper management, and even the CEO, earning the recognition, compensation, and opportunities they might have sought as entrepreneurs, but without the major downsides. 

Therefore, your first move – investing time and energy in honest self-reflection – is crucial. It’s time to carefully consider your strengths, weaknesses, and motivations and plan your next move based on this intel, not the idealized images and videos that saturate modern media. Your future self will thank you for it.