Why Every Entrepreneur Needs an Alter Ego

Howard Schultz never called himself a street fighter. But those who knew him back in the early days of Starbucks would say otherwise. He wasn’t the polished CEO in a tailored suit sipping macchiatos. He was a man on the edge. A kid from the Brooklyn projects with something to prove. When Schultz sat across from investors, he didn’t see a friendly negotiation. He saw war. He once admitted, “I was playing offense all the time, and I was willing to mix it up.” What Schultz likely didn’t realize—at least not consciously—was that he had built an alter ego. A version of himself that could walk into any boardroom, stare down titans, and refuse to blink. That identity wasn’t born out of comfort. It was forged in discomfort, desperation, and necessity. And it became the armor he needed to build an empire.

Entrepreneurship is war disguised in business casual. And if you walk into the fight wearing your everyday self—the version of you that doubts, hesitates, and overthinks—you will get steamrolled. Business is a street fight, and the weapon most entrepreneurs forget to wield is the alter ego. This isn’t about pretending. It’s about constructing a battle-hardened persona designed to show up when the stakes are highest. If you think you can walk into the battlefield wearing your civilian clothes, you’re already dead.

Alter Egos Are Shields Against Fear

Fear is the entrepreneur’s most persistent enemy. It’s the quiet whisper that tells you you’re not enough. That you’re too small. Too new. Too underqualified. When you create an alter ego, you create psychological distance from that voice. You stop operating as yourself. You start operating as the Boardroom Beast, the Street Fighter, the Commander. Beyoncé famously created ‘Sasha Fierce’ to channel a bolder, more unapologetic version of herself on stage. Schultz crafted the street fighter from Brooklyn to sit at negotiation tables with billionaires. Science backs this up. Research on self-distancing shows that when people adopt third-person perspectives—or create characters—they perform under pressure with greater calm and clarity. An alter ego isn’t a gimmick. It’s armor. It’s the shield that lets you step into the fire without flinching. It protects your most fragile self so your boldest self can take the shot.

Alter Egos Help Entrepreneurs Play Bigger

When you operate as yourself, you play to avoid mistakes. When you activate your alter ego, you play to make something happen. It’s the difference between a sales call where you hesitate to ask for the close… and one where you walk in expecting to own the room. Todd Herman calls this the ‘alter ego effect.’ And research agrees. A University of Minnesota study found that children who pretended to be superheroes persevered longer on boring or difficult tasks. Adults are no different. When entrepreneurs step into a defined alter ego, they give themselves permission to act boldly—because they’re playing the role, not risking their raw, everyday self.

And let’s not mistake boldness for recklessness. When you channel an alter ego, you are not abandoning discipline. You’re sharpening it. You become the version of yourself who prepares meticulously, speaks with certainty, and steps into the pitch, the negotiation, the room—expecting victory, not hoping for it. The best closers, the best founders, the best salespeople? They’ve all crafted an inner character who thrives in the moment when others freeze.

Alter Egos Create Identity Alignment with Your Mission

You can’t scale a business if your internal identity is stuck at the level of freelancer or side-hustler. Alter egos force you to rehearse and embody the identity you need for your next level. You stop saying, “I hope I can pull this off,” and start saying, “This is who I am.” The Navy SEALs call this ‘identity stacking.’ They train soldiers to assume the identity of warriors long before they feel like it. Entrepreneurs must do the same. Your alter ego isn’t a mask. It’s an intentional identity that makes your mission inevitable.

When you create an alter ego, you’re sending a message to your nervous system: this is who I am when the bullets start flying. Over time, the lines between your alter ego and your true self blur. And that’s exactly the point. Schultz might have started as a scrappy kid from Brooklyn pretending to be a CEO. But by the time Starbucks became a household name, the two identities were one and the same.

Parting Advice

You can’t will your way to the next level as the same version of yourself. The investor meeting, the pitch, the tough conversation with your team—they require the Boardroom Beast. The Closer. The Commander. Name it. Define it. Wear it when the bullets are flying. This isn’t fantasy. This is battlefield tactics for entrepreneurs who refuse to play small. The battlefield is littered with the bodies of founders who brought their soft selves to a knife fight. Don’t be one of them.

Next Steps

Want more battle-tested strategies to win the inner game of entrepreneurship? Listen to the Built by Discipline podcast where I break down identity, mindset, and alter ego tools every founder needs to survive and dominate.