Written by 
Up until lately, I had thought that the sense of entitlement was limited to those who were younger than me. That my generation had created this sense as part of our growing up.
I was wrong.
My wife’s aunt demonstrated that very clearly. Because that was what was at the basis of her actions. She felt that she was entitled to anything Gerry had left behind.
As entrepreneurs we need to guard ourselves against this attitude … in ourselves, in our employees and in our clients. And learn to use it ethically.
So what is the sense of entitlement? It is a belief that for whatever reason, a person is entitled to something. That they have earned it, and they deserve it. That they should have it.
The truth, of course, is different. Yes, we may have worked for something. Yes, we may have, in the eyes of a rational God have earned it. But that is no guarantee that we actually will or should have it.
An entrepreneur sees this in their own actions. After all, we all work hard to build a business. We give up our time, energy and sweat. For those foolish enough we may even give up our family and health. But that is no guarantee of success. If it were far more people would be successful. And far fewer of the people who are, would be.
Life isn’t fair.
As entrepreneurs we need to leave the sense of entitlement behind. We need to try and try and try again. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. Sometimes failing through our own faults and sometimes suceeding despite them.
But never letting our sense of entitlement fool us into believing that we should stop or that we’ve earned our position. Because we haven’t. We may have paid for it, but we haven’t earned it.
We see it in our treatment of our suppliers. How many times have you said to a supplier … that’s too expensive, I can’t afford it. You should work for this amount. As if it’s their problem that you haven’t earned enough to pay the price. As Dan Kennedy recently remarked, “It’s not that the price is too high, it’s that your earnings are too low for it.”
We see it in our employees (or ourselves in that role). We see it in how they treat customers. Do the customers owe us their custom just for having the products? Do they have to buy just because we’ve gone out of our way? We’ve all seen this sense of entitlement in the poor treatment we’ve had in major department stores. Clerks who were more interested in discussing their latest date than in serving the customer.
We see it in our customers. We see them believing that we should give them free information just because we did so in the past. We see them wanting to pay rates well below fair market. We see them chasing the cheapest price without regard for the quality of the product.
This sense of entitlement is a failing we all need to fight against. Both in ourselves and in others. The truth is much less pleasant but at least we deserve the result.
Building an Internet Business Is not as simple as 1-2-3 but I believe the First Step should be learning how an Internet Business operates. And In a nutshell the way you do this, Is by you first becoming a student of the business learning all you can, then applying that and then reaping the benefits.
Absolutely … which is one of the advantages of an internet business. Mistakes in IM aren’t that expensive (at least not when compared to a bricks and mortar company). So experimentation is a key part of IM. Learning – both by studying and by doing/experimenting – is absolutely mandatory. You need to know how to run a business and you only really learn that by trying and applying the theories you learn elsewhere. The school of hard knocks isn’t forgiving but it does give the best lessons — if you bother to listen and learn.
My point was that as Entrepreneurs we sometimes fall prey to the (mistaken) belief that things should work and therefore we should be making money. Unfortunately, sometimes experiments fail. We need to be prepared to move on and accept that it wasn’t necessarily us. That life just didn’t swing our way this time.
I was also making the point that when working with customers we (and our employees) need to give customers the best we possibly can … even if they aren’t buying. And the fact that they aren’t buying today doesn’t mean they won’t buy tomorrow! Good customer service doesn’t entitle us to sales … but bad customer service guarantees that we won’t make sales we would have otherwise.
i am so interested in starting an Internet Business because there is a growing number of internet consumers today. I am still trying to learn a lot about managing and starting an Internet Business.
Good luck. Enjoy the ride.
Hey, great blog…but I don’t understand how to add your site in my rss reader. Can you Help me, please
I’m not really much into RSS (I get enough info without it). In the upper right corner you’ll see RSS Feed with two options RSS and Comments RSS. If you select RSS you will get a screen with the phrase ‘subscribe to this feed with’. If you select the version you are most comfortable with (e.g. Live Bookmarks) you will get a button on the browser that contains the feed. In my case, my email includes an RSS feed. All I do is enter the address and viola. Beyond that I can’t help. I suggest you try the reader’s help.
I have been looking around http://www.learningcreators.com and actually am impressed by the good content material here. I work the nightshift at my job and it really gets boring. I have been coming right here for the past couple nights and reading. I simply wanted to let you know that I have been enjoying what I have seen and I look ahead to reading more.
Genial brief and this post helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you for your information.
Hey i am new to this forum, Iv been looking around for sometime as a guest & thought id pop in and introduce myself.
Thanks man, got to share this ; )
Hello everyone thanks for
good information.
Thanks for good information that comes out to
read.
I am glad I found your blog, I will return.
In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me to start my own BlogEngine blog now|Really the blogging is spreading its wings rapidly. Your write up is a fine example of it.
I found your blog very interesting. I will check back often to read your updates.
great experience, dude! thanks for this great post wow… it’s very wonderful report.
What is captcha code?, pls provide me captcha code codes or plugin, Thanks in advance.
Hello, I found your blog in a new directory of blogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, Your blog looks good. Have a nice day.
Captcha is the little letters or numbers that help prove that your entry is by a real person not a ‘bot. Do a search for captcha plug-ins at WordPress. There are several available.
Awesome post…
thanks !! very helpful post!
Hi there I like your post
I stumbled onto your blog and read a few post. I like your style of writing.
Marvellous article you have induced here! The web is full of horrid authorship and I was grabbed by your limpidity. Your stopping points are dead-on and I will forthwith subscribe to your rss feed to stay up to date with your up future day postings.
Great post, I learned a lot! Looking forward to checking back soon!
This great post helped me very much! Bookmarked the blog, extremely interesting categories everywhere that I read here! I like the information, thank you.
Sup everybody, helpful forum I have found It exceedingly helpful and it has helped me loads
I hope to contribute and help other people like this chat board has helped me
_________________
blackra1n
I am starting to take my feet on affiliate programs too, so this article is excellent starting point!
Shared it on Stumbleupon and submitted on Digg 
Awesome post! I’ve been trying to come up with a good internet business idea for a while. Instead, I have come up with a great non-internet business idea, which kind of sucks in a way because this idea requires a lot of money, as opposed to a full internet-based business that might not require that much to get it started. I’m not giving up though. I recently started a blog where I plan to document my steps for starting my company. I figured it would keep me motivated and force me to keep at it. I also hope it will motivate the readers to keep trying to accomplish their goals. By the way, I love your site. I’ll be adding it to my list of interesting blogs.
Hey very nice blog!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…