Episode 118
A lot of people underestimate what it takes to transition from being an employee to launching your own business. But equally, people overestimate it too, and hold themselves back from doing what they really want.
It's true, that it's not just about starting a business and all that entails. It's about transforming from an employee to an owner. And there's a shift in status, responsibility and identity, which can be pretty tricky to navigate, but not impossible. You just need to know how.
When I made my transition out of corporate, I knew I wanted to share what I had learned along the way, exactly how you go about exiting a career you've had for a long time and into the world of entrepreneurship.
This then turned into The Career to Entrepreneur Method (C2E Method).
The CTE method and it's based on five pillars. They are Mindset, Preparation, Habits, Learning, and Strategy. These are things to focus on before, during, and after your career to entrepreneur journey.
MINDSET MATTERS
This time I'm going to focus on the first pillar, and I think, to be honest, the most important, which is mindset. What I've learnt is that your mind likes to play tricks on you, it likes to play games, it likes to hold you back, it likes to make you hide yourself, it likes to slow down your progress and sometimes it even can make you give up.
In essence, it's not always on your side. So you need to have ways of identifying when your mind is against you and have the tools and techniques to be able to deal with it.
When you decide to plan to leave your career for a business it can feel uncomfortable. You're stepping away from what you know, where you're comfortable, where you've got a status, where you feel at home, and that can bring up a whole world of uncertainty. It can bring back memories, it can bring back mistakes you've made in the past, it can make you feel a little bit naked, a little bit exposed. So you need to get a handle on it before it starts sabotaging you.
Also, moving out of your career and, into a business can take time, which allows negativity to creep in. It allows some of those doubts to fester, even if you have the most positive mindset when you begin.
HOW YOUR MINDSET CAN BE CHALLENGED
The types of mindset issues that can creep in are fears. For example, fear of failure. what people are going to think of you, embarrassing yourself, not being good enough, of course, and not being able to earn the money that you currently earn.
You can also have limiting beliefs, for example, that you need to know more before you leave or start, that you're not qualified enough for the thing you want to do, that it's too early for you or it's too late for you in life.
You can worry about that loss of status. How will you feel when you don't have the title, the position, or the job function? After all that becomes a core of who we are. Even before you start to create a business, these thoughts can pop into your head. How am I going to feel when I'm no longer the director of x, the manager of y, or the supervisor of z?
You've created this picture of yourself often through your career. So that status and the loss of that and potentially giving that up can be massive and can hold you back for a long time. These are potential issues that you do need to think about. It's not just about knowing what social media to use or what idea you're going to turn into a business.
Mindset is everything in your move from your career to entrepreneurship. And you really shouldn't underestimate it, which is why I'm going to spend quite a lot of time on this podcast talking about it.
HOW TO MANAGE MINDSET CHALLENGES
So the key to managing your mindset is to have the tools and techniques so you can deal with things as and when they come up. This is why it's so important to do the learning and research before you start or when you're in the early days of setting up a business, so you know what to expect when you are hit with a mindset issue.
Rather than dealing with the fallouts when it’s too late. For example, when you do feel that sense of doubt when you do feel those old memories coming up of things when things hadn't worked so well. That is when you need to be able to go, “ah, I can do this, or I know how to deal with this.”
You also need to train your brain to cultivate a success mentality, a positive money mindset and an entrepreneurial mindset.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS…
if you're thinking about starting a business so you can leave your career, or are on your way already, you must work on your mindset.
Because no matter how mentally strong you think you are, you will come up against mindset challenges before, during, and after your career to entrepreneur journey. It will never stop being a challenge because of the way our brains are wired.
The first step is recognising this and being prepared for it. Because then when it happens, you don't feel weak or like you're not enough or that you should give up, you know how to deal with it.
The second step is arming yourself with ways to fight any negativity, so you can stay resilient, motivated and focused on what you really want.
