Mike DeJong: Growing Too Early Can Hurt Your Business

Mike DeJong is a multi-business owner, keynote speaker, and the author of Grow Smart: Your Path to Freedom: Mastering the Transformation from Operator to Owner. Over the past 30 years across multiple industries, including the last decade in franchising, Mike has built businesses, turned around struggling operations, and often been the person called in to fix what isn't working. Through that experience he discovered something most entrepreneurs do not realize until it is too late: Owning a business and having an owner's mindset are two completely different things. Mike now teaches entrepreneurs how to escape what he calls the operator trap, the cycle where owners work harder and harder but never actually gain freedom. In episode 661 of the Fraternity Foodie Podcast, we find out what pushed Mike toward business ownership, what is the most common problem he seed when things start going wrong, what is the difference between an operator mindset and an owner mindset, what is the difference between a student leader who runs everything themselves versus one who builds systems within their chapter, why growing too early can hurt your business, how should young entrepreneurs think about scaling, what is the difference between having "staff" and building a true team, what are the first 3 steps students should take when starting their business, what habits should students build now to avoid burnout and overwork later in life, and what is the definition of success. Enjoy!