In business, as in life, we often have to be our own advocate. This basically means if you want something you have to ask, because no one is going to do it for you. You have to look out for your own interests. This may seem obvious to some, but in reality it may be a little trickier than you think.

We start out in school doing just that, but over the years the behavior changes. In kindergarten, if you had to go to the bathroom, you definitely let it be known. The same was true if you were hungry, tired, or didn’t feel well. Most young kids just naturally speak up to take care of their needs, at first anyway.

Then, for a myriad of reasons, the mixed messages from authority begin. Due to the need to accommodate a whole classroom, we are conditioned to wait. We are told things like “wait your turn”, “be patient”, “be thoughtful of others”, and “wait until recess”. For the good of the group we are taught to set aside our personal initiative. The result of all this conditioning often adds up to a mindset of sacrificing or at least putting off our own needs for others. While this type of thinking is excellent for military service or being just another “cog in the machine” of someone else’s company, it doesn’t serve an entrepreneur well.

Many successful entrepreneurs know that “looking out for number one” is the key to prosperity. Take Bill Gates for example. In the early 1980’s, IBM saw that personal computers were the wave of the future. They thought they were visionaries. Their whole mindset was on designing hardware that people could afford and buy for their own homes. They didn’t worry too much about the fact that the average citizen didn’t want to learn an operating language like DOS to be able to use a machine to balance their check book.

Although IBM didn’t give operating systems much thought, Mr. Gates did. He saw that the real long term profits were in the software not the machines that ran it. Did Gates tell his IBM connections that their focus was in the wrong place? Of course not! Working as his own advocate he quietly had his Windows® operating system installed on all their machines before they went out the door. From this stroke of genius Microsoft® flourished and the rest is history.

Of course no business operates in a vacuum. You have to be careful not to be so self serving that you burn bridges that you may need to cross later. A balance needs to be found that, when operating in your own self interest, you create win - win situations with your partners. In the end you have to be your own advocate because when you are an entrepreneur “school is out” and no one is going to do it for you!